


We Walk on Earth

by mattepinkallshades



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Abortion, Blood, Established Relationship, F/F, Flashbacks, Fluff and Smut, Horror, Telekinesis, bullying per the original story Carrie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-08-09 15:52:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16452848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattepinkallshades/pseuds/mattepinkallshades
Summary: When the deep curves of her own breasts appear on the third button down Trixie decides yes, she will try for a quickie before Katya heads off to another work day of sliding her fingers into unhappily pregnant women.The pan flips off the range and clangs nearly flat on the kitchen floor. The bottom of it spins for a second and grinds to a stop.Katya bit her tongue when it flew up and over and she can taste blood. Trixie shrieked at the sound as she did not see it happen. Her face still feels the hot grin she wore right before it happened. Their apartment is dead silent.***New note: this fic is very much not abandoned :) :) :) it is on hiatus. I'm reworking it to my liking because I adore it. I want to finish by Fall 2019.***





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Carrie remix with these favorites in love yet again, with lots of blood. 
> 
> CW: in Katya’s dream sequence she thinks a high school prom burns down. 
> 
> Trixie describes herself as “slightly agoraphobic” though it’s not intended as any diagnosis. 
> 
> I hope in the end you feel like the meet and greet mom who told Trixie when she bombed her set earlier this year: “I liked it.”

_Face down in the dirt_  
_In your mini-skirt_  
_Teeth touch the tracks_  
_Yeah I got your back_  
_Oh, I got your back_

 

Waking up soaked in sweat either means they fucked and Trixie forgot to turn the thermostat back down, or it means Katya had the dream again.

Katya twists her right wrist and it's limber, not stiff. She makes a suspicious, sour face and brings her hand to her nose, laughing only in her mind at how slovenly they've become. Whatever she smells on her hand it's not _that_. She definitely had the dream again.

“Sueyyyy!” Trixie yells out from the kitchen, higher at the end like she’s calling in a certain farm animal at feeding time. Katya thinks something awful with immediately regret, scratches across her sharp meticulously sculpted eyebrows. Although her hair has been platinum blonde for years, she usually pencils them in dark.

Way back when she first transformed from mouse turd brown to blonde, Katya had to bleach it herself with beauty shop supplies to afford the upkeep. The learning curve was harsh. That was right after she and Trixie relocated to a new state for the second time since graduating high school together, after Katya finished pre-med. Their abnormally extensive moving history is one of those dreadful side conversations couples can fall into in the middle of an otherwise mediocre story, arguing over whether some detail took place in this house or that year or Idaho. Nobody cares.

After she did the first bleach a full layer of Katya's fine, frizzy hair broke clean off. They both agreed it was the blend she had made combined with leaving it in too long, and maybe a touch of adjustment stress. Not just starting over again in a new place, but with new names. And this time they were not as optimistic about people's capacity to let shit go, grow up and fuck off.

“Katya, come on these’ll be cold,” Trixie calls to her again. Katya is out of bed now paused in their bedroom doorway, letting the headrush die down.

_Then stop floating them in the air,_ she thinks.

“I float them in air because you like it.” The warmth in Katya's ears freezes. Her nipples harden from the chill. She pushes her hands out in a gesture of expelling negative energy from her body and walks down the hallway into their living room. This is the first place they have stayed longer than two years. They call every room their own now.

“Did you forget you're not telepathic, sweetie?” Katya asks. Her oversized white T-shirt has pit stains and the bottom hem is ripped. She approaches the kitchen with her hands on her hips, naked below the waist.

“It's a habit to know what the woman I live with is thinking at all times,” Trixie answers solemnly. “And I love you,” she adds with a twisted smile.

Trixie is in a fuzzy yellow bathrobe because it is late October, just a few days until Halloween, and she is living for the coziness of cold weather. She wears full two-piece pajamas underneath. There was a time early after they split town together when she wished only for warm weather opposite to the cold Midwestern climate they grew up in. But priorities changed. Her wishes after high school started out so broad, leaving bad happenings behind, and then narrowed as things inevitably kept happening.

Katya sits on a brushed metal bar chair at their kitchen island while her pancakes stack neatly on her plate. Trixie is right, she finds it satisfying to watch especially when Trixie does it without even looking. Who else would bother adding cockiness to telekinesis itself?

Trixie’s thick blonde hair is fixed in an intricate fishtail braid. Her natural dirty blonde hair has bright highlights that temporary colors show up well in. Katya strokes her braid gently when she stands next to her with coffee. She knows the braid is not meant to last long so Trixie will not fuss about her touching it.

Trixie does fascinating things with her hair, makeup and clothes. The braid is just a pretty touch first thing in the morning. After Katya is off to the clinic she will spend hours trying out YouTube tutorials from hair and makeup artists. She did not plan to be a kept woman, or a vain, superficial, desperately clawing through her skin for a youth she never enjoyed woman, and she is none of those things. Trixie takes care of everything for both of them very well and proudly, and if she did not they would be paying someone to do it all for them. 

“It doesn't bother you to squash your bare pussy onto our beautiful bar chairs?” Trixie antagonizes, slapping her squishy palm on the counter next to Katya to simulate her accusation. “Isn't it cold?” She has a pirate eye glare and her other hand rests on her fluffy yellow hip.

Unmoved, Katya chews and swallows her food.

“My pussy needs to chill before work.” She pulls a long blonde strand of hair out of the syrup on her fork. Whose hair it is is a toss-up but Trixie takes it from her before she can wipe it onto the cloth napkin still in its ring next to her plate.

As Trixie wiggles her hips dancing it over to the trash can, the frying pan she used for the pancakes rattles on the oven range. Neither of them notices because Katya laughs encouragingly while Trixie starts a chaste strip tease revealing her pink flannel pajamas printed with glittery diamond rings.

The frying pan rattles faster while Trixie unbuttons her top.

When the deep curves of her own breasts appear on the third button down Trixie decides yes, she will try for a quickie before Katya heads off to another work day of sliding her fingers into unhappily pregnant women.

The pan flips off the range and clangs nearly flat on the kitchen floor. The bottom of it spins for a second and grinds to a stop.

Katya bit her tongue when it flew up and over and she can taste blood. Trixie shrieked at the sound as she did not see it happen. Her face still feels the hot grin she wore right before it happened. Their apartment is dead silent. Trixie’s hand is clasped over her mouth and Katya's shoulders are tensed around her ears.

Outside on the street level five floors down, girls holler and skitter around an outdoor basketball court. The court is attached to the high school across the street. They must have just started their morning gym period.

Katya braces her hands on the edge of the counter prepared to push up and off the bar chair. She has not looked yet. She knows there will be no mess on the floor to clean up. Trixie simply forgot to contain it somewhere after finishing the pancakes.

“Baby--it’s okay, I'll gladly take my chances for an early morning shot at those tits.” She is nearly by her side when Trixie stoops, picks up the pan and throws it into the stainless steel sink. It makes a louder crash than when it hit the floor and Katya shrugs, shakes her head and turns around.

All the appliances and finishes in the kitchen, including the sink, were selected to minimize nicks and shattering. No porcelain, no glass.

Their countertops are clear of all loose objects that are not actively in use. Knives especially, but everything from tea kettles to house keys are kept contained. Beyond contained, secured inside drawers and cabinets and inside doors all fitted with magnetic locks. Same goes for the entryway, bathroom, bedroom. Large furniture is anchored to the wall. Books, secured in cubbies with fiberglass panels.

Technically these are child locks, made to keep curious people out.

But everywhere Trixie and Katya have lived over the years, they install these locks to keep objects inside to prevent projectiles. Not technically everywhere, there was no issue while Katya was still in college. Just everywhere since Katya started med school.

In the living room they have found a happy medium, accepting that objects will occasionally end up tossed off their shelves or even lobbed across the room. They would not want to relegate sex to the bedroom even if that worked. They learned the first time that moving rooms did not lessen the force.

So they choose their living room objects intentionally. The restrictions have forced a creativity upon their style. They cannot have breakables or sharp, heavy things whether big or small. With time and the growth of online boutique craftsmanship they have discovered many ways to decorate their home softly. There are endless decorative bowls and figurines made of various textiles and fibers. Trixie discovered vases with gorgeous finishes and textures made of flexible silicone so they can keep the flowers that Katya buys her. It has taken time, trial and error but they have figured out how to mostly stay safe and sane, at least in their own home.

“Maybe Ambien will block that dream,” Trixie calls out from the bathroom. She flushes the toilet and meets Katya in their bedroom to strip the damp sheets. “Before you ask, I know you had the dream--”

“Because I’m dripping with sweat. And it's not even for your birthday!”

“Yeah, on my birthday you don't kink shame me.”

“Oh mleh mleh mleh,” Katya dramatically pouts and makes kissy lips at the same time. She leans on the bed and pulls up the remaining corner of their fitted sheet, walks on her knees to hand it to Trixie. Trixie kisses her when she leans in for it, reaches for her T-shirt and strips it off, too. Now naked and kneeled on the bare mattress, Katya runs one finger inside the cuff of Trixie’s still partially unbuttoned pajama top.

“Ah, you're running late now, no fun zone. Just adding this to my loads for the day!” Trixie chides with a twang.

Katya sticks her tongue out with one foot already on the floor. She knows her schedule for the day and that she has to be there right at the beginning to get two second trimester patients started. They require medication that needs several hours to take effect prior to their procedures and she has to be in the facility for it to be administered.

Before she steps in the shower, Katya loops her long hair into a pile and clips it. Dry shampoo will have to do. All of Katya's damaged hair from the early years of bleaching grew out long ago. Now she can afford monthly professional blonde coloring, among other nice trimmings for herself and her special lady (best friend, roommate, lover, girlfriend obviously). And with it being nice and healthy Katya has grown her hair long enough to wear in mermaid waves over her breasts.

Well, over her nipples. Even at her age as a proud, queer abortion provider with baby bangs and a full bush, Katya pouts now and then about her titlessness. Trixie takes it as an invitation to rub them through her shirt and whisper how much she likes to suck them. That _may_ not be Katya's intent when she whines but the impact is pretty fucking dreamy.

\--

Dressed in black slacks and a dark green shirt, patent leather Dansko clogs--they are supportive and they wipe clean, which is verbatim what Trixie writes on the tag every other Christmas when she begrudgingly gifts Katya a new pair--Katya has a few minutes before she has to leave so she scans all the open areas for unsecured contraband. If Trixie sits at home alone having sexy thoughts or even getting off, Katya would rather not come home to a cracked window (again) or, worse, a bandaged head (has not happened in years). Especially because it would somehow be her fault.

“Did you hear what I said about Ambien before?” Trixie comes up behind her and frees some curls caught under the jacket Katya has put on, fluffs the hair matted at her crown.

“I did but that shit can give you weird dreams itself, make you eat stuff and forget it happened.”

“Oh, like you can eat me out and won’t remember it, so I don’t have to give you credit?”

Katya hunches over and wheezes laughter while Trixie stands over her with a small, satisfied smile.

“Exactly like that.” She stands straight for Trixie to check her over. This is really a free opportunity for one more jab at her makeup, her dented bangs, whatever wrinkled shirt she dug from her corner of their bedroom closet. Katya has only a corner of their bedroom closet for all her clothes that need hanging. The rest is a mix of Trixie’s regular clothes, the costumes she makes that the outside world may never see but look sufficiently spectacular when she bends over on their bed, and fabric for works in progress.

This morning Trixie does not have anything to add.

“See you when you get home. I’ll be here, your slightly agoraphobic soulmate who could have burned that school to the ground but instead uses her telekinetic powers to make breakfast like movie Matilda.” Trixie twirls her braid over her shoulder.

Katya shifts her feet.

“Wow. That’s a lot to dump on me right as I have to walk out the door.”

“Well I can’t pretend your dream doesn’t disturb me. I have wet dreams about Paul Rudd, this is a little closer to the bone.”

“I--” Katya pauses with her mouth open, not quite sure if she should try to say something funny or meaningful or just hear her out. “I’m sorry you’re hurting, sweetie. I love you.”

“It’s fine, love you too,” Trixie says with a tired smile and a soft shrug. Katya does not take it as a dismissal or bait for later. They have had to accept more than their fair share of discomfort and it has earned them the perspective of a much older couple.

Katya puts her fingers on Trixie’s jaw and pecks her on the lips.

“See me out?”

“Of course.”

While Katya opens the door to leave, a FaceTime call rings through Trixie’s laptop.

“Ah! It’s BibleGirl, I have to go, get outta here,” Trixie yells, squinting at the screen sitting open on the kitchen counter and pulling her hand back from Katya’s.

“She stole your perfect username and you forgive her. You truly are a saint,” Katya says while Trixie closes the door on her and latches the chain.

Seconds later Katya opens the door again, just as much as the chain will allow.

“The actress who played movie Matilda is actually really cool now, check out her Twit--”

Trixie makes the door slam shut from the kitchen and Katya cackles out in the hallway.

\--

**The Dream**

_Every time Katya’s dream gets to the part where Trixie’s lips and tongue push out to blow a bubble with her gum, Katya opens her mouth to scream. Her actions have no effect on the dream’s events. Trixie doesn’t flinch. She blows her bubble and the pink gum stretches and thins like a blister._

_They face each other at the top of the road that leads down to the parking lot of their high school campus. Trixie’s bubble bursts and an explosion consumes the gymnasium, bringing down the roof. Long thick legs of fire cage the prom goers and kick each one until the last scream stops._

_Katya begs herself to disappear or run off somewhere she can’t hear it. She tries to drown out the noise with her own but can’t make a sound._

It would have been feasible for this to happen in real life.

The standing in the middle of the road at night part, that is. They originate from the kind of barren Midwestern farm town where they were more likely to be kidnapped and chopped up with no witnesses than get hit by a driver that time of night. No one would have been out that late except the prom goers.

And aside from Trixie and Katya they were all inside the gymnasium, dead. Toaster strudel.

_In the dream._

In the real world everybody lived that night, no reason why they would not. Not even a drunk driving death, despite the highway patrollers promising an assembly of high school seniors the week before that ‘every prom night we scoop one-a-ur melons ofta road’. Which made perfect sense, seeing as highway cops are also paramedics/medical examiners/crime scene cleanup crews, and all teenagers ride motorcycles leading to an abundance of crushed ‘melons’ strewn around town.

They all lived and grew up, more or less. A few have surely died since then but their blood is on someone else’s hands.

\--

**High School**

Sue knew yet another vicious attack was being planned on Carrie and that she was partly to blame for it.

Partly, ha! Fuck that. She hadn’t just been an active participant in the shower incident that banded together the locker room gang to ruin Carrie’s life once and for all. Sue had benefited from a system that shit on Carrie over and over and over and over again all of their lives.

Sue had 18 years of relative happiness at school under her belt; Carrie had 18 years of misery in the same time and place.

Sue didn't perpetrate crimes on a regular basis. She was one of the nicest ones in the large circle that pointed in at Carrie. But she was also socially in lock step with the small cluster of the nastiest ones. Ones like Chris and Norma whose lips retracted when they spat their vitriol at Carrie.

“… Pig shit …”

“… Bible girl …”

“... Fat cunt …”

Their insults were uninspired, but their teeth were awfully big.

And then after school was done, Carrie got to walk home to that batshit mother who was rumored to have immaculately conceived her while punishing her own pussy with a crucifix for impure thoughts.

That was a lie of course. Sue may have spread it two or three times but she did not believe it. Carrie’s father was a drunk and he left them in poverty long ago, Sue’s mother had compassionately explained to her over and over.

Sue’s mother did not appreciate fanaticism and Carrie’s mother visited their home and all the neighborhood homes weekly with new literature and trinkets fighting for the souls of the children in their community. All the children, including the unborn. Sue asked her mother to put aside the little plastic babies and baby body parts Carrie’s mother pressed into her palm each week. Sue’s mother did not understand but she obliged.

For some reason, Sue felt she must do something to fight for Carrie. It was not enough to stop contributing to the hurt and ignore what else happened.

Maybe it was her own recent pregnancy scare, the time spent thinking of what she might do about it and how precious that little life may or may not be. She had not had to decide in the end. She bled freely, thanked the universe for it and dumped Tommy and his hulking cock. Tommy had been her Adonis sweetheart but turned into a sack of cement mix when she intimated she could be in trouble, likely dating back to Valentine’s Day.

Sue had a firm enough grasp of Schrödinger's cat to feel that the paradox somehow applied when she was in possible pregnancy limbo. When that limbo resolved and she untangled herself from Tommy’s clumsy arms, all she could think about was Carrie. What would happen to her.

The locker room debacle in April when Carrie bled down the drain, convinced she would hemorrhage, coincided with Sue’s own blood. Yes, she too had hurled a tampon and an insult at Carrie’s screaming wet body along with the other girls. She felt nauseated, thought it could be empathy or guilt or morning sickness, then felt the blood in her jeans and grabbed a tampon for herself. In a toilet stall 20 feet away she confirmed she had been spared.

With her burden lifted, Sue felt compelled to open the lid, save the cat.

\--

One morning Sue arrived at their homeroom early just as Carrie always did and handed her a note when she knew they would be alone. Sue handed it to her intently, looked her straight in the eyes and nodded. She knew Carrie would ignore anything furtively passed or tossed to her the usual way, assume it was another joke being played on her. Or a mistake and meant for someone else, at best.

They met in the wet grass behind the boiler room. That spot was permanently wet from the boiler malfunctioning and keeping the high school overheated, to Sue’s particular distaste. Sue chose to meet there because behind the library, by contrast, was the spot for handies and smokes between classes. Because the student body thought staff wouldn't check there, being that it was so not private.

Plot twist, security cameras were installed everywhere no matter how public or private, which gave the school district the appearance of being effective and aggressive at identifying shenanigans and bullying. Great line items on the budget.

Sue wore a red cotton sweater layered over a wrinkled collared shirt underneath overalls. The shirt was one she'd had since she was a young teen and never outgrown. She'd changed her style since dumping Tommy. But she'd stopped caring what he thought of her clothes before that.

At first she leaned her shoulders against the brick building and sunk her Timberlands in the mud. Then she yanked up each boot with a squelch and paced until she saw Carrie approach across the asphalt courts. The thrill in her stomach surprised her.

Carrie looked as she always did. A homemade long skirt with no pleats--pleats were designed to flow around the body, temptation and seduction--and a _Little House on the Prairie_ blouse. Much of the original color beaten out of the fabrics. Thick dull blonde hair parted in the middle around her moonface. Large dark eyes, cast down though Sue could practically look up into them, what with being quite small and Carrie being taller than average. Freckles over pale, dish watery skin. Squishy mouth with a natural dark mauve color to it.

Sue sometimes fixated on Carrie's lips lately, in class. In the cafeteria, too, where she sat alone so there weren't other people around to block the sunlight from the windows around her. Sue would scrunch her brows and snorted softly through her nose like a bull looking at them.

Sue told Carrie about the locker room gang’s plan. The prom and the rigged vote and the crummy plastic crown to force Carrie up on the stage; the pig’s blood and the bucket perched on the rafters with a rope pull that Chris would tug, defiling Carrie’s innocent body from head to toe with stinking red fluid swimming with bacteria from being out of the pig’s corpse for days.

She rolled her eyes as Carrie wailed about that poor bludgeoned animal like it was the saddest part of it all. After not quite a minute, Sue grabbed her soft, baby fat wrists and shook her.

“Listen! Fuck the pig. It was gonna die anyway, and I bet life at the slaughterhouse is nothing it was too sad to leave,” Sue laughed, knowing she had nothing to lose showing this girl her darker humor. Her worthless soon to be former friends were glad to be cruel but hesitant to be ‘gross’ or ‘weird’ so she hid her gift from them.

Carrie laughed through the snot covering her nostrils. She reached into her backpack for a handkerchief and blew her nose with a loud honk.

_She really is just herself_ , Sue thought. She noticed the hanky was embroidered with words. Probably some bible verse.

“Oh, do you want to see?” Carrie asked, and Sue grimaced. “What it says! Not … gee whiz.”

“Oh, yeah sure why not.” Carrie stretched the clean red embroidered phrase between her fingers:

_Does this smell like chloroform to you?_

Sue doubled over laughing with her eyes screwed shut.

“Where did you get that?” Sue asked, bright pink and still laughing.

“I made it.”

Sue’s stomach flipped and she turned in the toes of her boots, smitten and all of a sudden shy around Carrie of all people.

She then explained _her_ double agent counterattack idea in hopes that Carrie would agree to it. Not really an attack, just … a deactivation that most people in their school wouldn't even know had occurred. But it would save Carrie and stick it right up Chris and the other girls’ asses.

Sue’s part in the locker room gang's plan was to sacrifice Tommy as her prom date and convince him he must take Carrie. They’d rely on his golden boy jock appeal as bait, a thick meaty dog bone to whet Carrie’s appetite. None of them knew yet that she’d broken up with Tommy because they were both too chicken shit for the school to find out their sweetheart status was shattered.

So to make her end happen, Sue had to promise Tommy she’d suck him off one last time. A _fter_ prom. She was smart, she'd seen plenty of prostitutes on TV demand that their clients run them their money before exchanging services. He couldn't force her to make good on it anyway, just like any other time she didn't feel like it and told him to knock on his mom’s door if he was so desperate.

“Dog? Yes. Meaty bone? Not for me he ain’t.” Carrie’s disinterest surprised Sue. Not for nothing, but Tommy was gorgeous. After all he’d been _her_ boyfriend, what did that say about what Carrie thought of _her_?

“Okay fair enough but you'll do it?” Sue said, biting off the end of her sentence.

“Why?” Carrie asked, dragging the side of her navy blue loafer in the dirty grass.

So many possible why's she could be asking and Sue didn't want to answer most of them.

“I mean why can't I just not go to prom at all, graduate and be done? I just know--Sue, they’ll never let me go if I mess with them. At least once we're not in school every day--”

“Do you want to leave this place? Get outta here, start somewhere new?” Sue blurted out.

“Do you?” asked Carrie.

“Yeah, I do. I mean I am, I’m doing it.” said Sue. She didn't know how to make it happen for Carrie but realized her last summer before starting college was going to be wide open and they could probably at least figure out how to start.

“You could come with me,” Sue said, darting her eyes across Carrie's round face looking straight into hers for the first time. “Watch this place burn in the rearview mirror.”

\--

On prom night, no blood was shed. Carrie was crowned queen in a fucking ugly ass dress she and Sue made together. It was a long sleeved tube of ruffly pale pink fabric with multi-shaded pink lace ruffle sleeves and a matching bib top. And a puffy pink feather drop waist. Carrie sewed it of course and Sue insisted on hot gluing huge pink bows and costume pearls all over for maximum emesis factor. The photo of it would be a blight on the school’s records of prom queens.

Once the crown and scepter were handed to Carrie, Tommy stood slightly back from her and darted his eyes up to the rafters where the bucket perched motionless. The fanfare continued and nothing happened as he expected.

The night before Sue had snuck into the gymnasium through an impossibly narrow vent and reconnected the rope to a nearby beam, retrieved and dumped the disgusting bucket of blood herself, replaced the empty bucket. She considered it some minor form of penance.

 

Sue wondered if they knew the blood would be clotted and rotten by now, if they were that deviant or if it would have just come as a bonus ick factor. When she thought of Carrie after she was done, what would have--she cried alone, never told Carrie the extent of how filthy it was.

The red curtains at the back of the stage where Carrie stood crowned shifted as though a bull was ready to storm through them. A chaperone teacher sauntered back to investigate and found Chris beating on her boyfriend's back while he uselessly yanked on a rope tied to something that wouldn't budge. As soon as he saw they'd been caught, he bolted and left Chris crying ‘Get back here Billy, dumb shit!’ after him.

That was it. That was all that happened. The prom went on its merry way. Carrie and Sue left early, neither bothering to speak to Tommy beforehand.

\--

As predicted, Sue’s social calendar was clear that summer as none of her former crowd sought her company.

Her parents were quite happy if a little suspicious about her sudden close friendship with Carrie. It wouldn't last past summer anyway. As far as they knew Sue would be off to college--already committed to pre-med, she'd be a busy little bee!--and Carrie had gotten inspired to sign up with some missionary program that would take her across the country, maybe even abroad. It was kind of their daughter to offer parting friendship to the town outcast.

Carrie's mother was not thrilled about her daughter’s plan to say the least. She knew well what missionary work could mean for her daughter, introducing her to young men pretending to be holy so they could peel off her wool tights and leave her with blisters that would never heal. Or worse, a child.

And what, pray tell, of the savage nations featured in the old reference books Carrie’s mother had inherited from her grandparents? New books and the pornographic shops that sold them were washed in sin, she would have none of them and fought back bile every time Carrie brought modern school books home with her. What would happen if Carrie were missioned to one of _those_ countries and _those_ people discovered what the devil had inserted into Carrie's brain, her evil power?

If Carrie’s mother never heard from Carrie again she would assume the worst and plant a holly bush in her memory.

Sue’s parents we were right in some ways, in that Sue would be off to college. She was a good planner and a better problem solver.

Carrie’s mother on the other hand was wrong in many ways, including where her daughter planned to go and who with (Sue’s mother was one of her many enemies and Sue was a whore, not her fault being a child living in a Godless house during Godless times).

Carrie and Sue became thick as thieves that summer. With time and practice Carrie’s powers had become fun and useful, not frightening and erratic. She showed Sue what she could do with them, in private behind closed doors.

Moving objects, from the smallest items like Sue’s shimmery lip gloss tubes to bigger things like the mirror Sue had painted black.

And just one time in public by the lake an hour outside of town.

The sun scorched Sue’s skin on the grass before the sandy part of the lake beach started. Carrie didn't want to get sand in her loafers--she didn't have sandals--and have to explain it to her mother. Every day she was still in that house remained tense and Sue understood.

“This sucks. It's all buggy back where the shade is ‘cause that's where the trees and bushes are. But it's too hot. It's worse out there,” Sue said gesturing her chin to the sand. “Let's go. I'm sorry I dragged you out here.”

Carrie didn't want to leave the lake. She'd never been before. This was where the cool kids went. She didn't need to be cool but she wanted some kind of good feeling with Sue there. She didn't know what was going to happen once they were living together. Maybe Sue would tire of her, get another gross boyfriend drooling over her. She would obviously make friends at college, while Carrie would find work as a seamstress. They could just be awkward near-strangers who live together. But she this small window where Sue seemed to want to be with just her. She didn't want to give it up.

She identified a few branches and tried them out before finding the one. It took great effort. They were healthy, living branches, not inanimate objects, and they wanted to stay where they were.

But Carrie focused on the one branch and pulled it closer to them, against the resistance of the tree’s thick rooted trunk. The leafy canopy made a dappled blend of shade and light across Sue’s small body. Sue quickly smiled her big, straight-toothed grin and turn her arms over, like the filtered light was attached to her skin.

From her beach chair Sue excitedly looked back to Carrie who sat on the ground in her usual full body attire, barely a smile on her face and a trickle of sweat between her trembling brows.

“Oh Carrie--it’s okay, you don't have to. Let it go.”

\--

At the end of August, Sue drove away from home in her vintage powder blue Volvo 240 packed tightly but with room left for one passenger and what she hoped would be no more than two suitcases. She picked up Carrie from the bus station as planned, plus a single suitcase. Sue’s chest swelled knowing she had convinced this girl to trust her with hardly any effort. After everything Carrie had been through, a tiny but indisputable fraction of it at Sue’s own hand, she agreed to walk next to Sue so quickly and without looking around them for cues or approval.

\--

**Back to present day ...**

Trixie gets a text and skips checking it, goes to her laptop to call back BibleGirl knowing the text was from her. When the call connects, Bible appears with crimped pale lavender hair and a spiked headband. Her lips look freshly injected.

“Trixie! Oh my god you look like a Swiss Miss packet, so precious.”

Bible is young but they connected when Trixie private messaged her about her particularly clever YouTube username: BibleGirl666. Trixie hardly expected any meaningful exchange but these chats have become something special she looks forward to. One friend other than Katya who she can share her looks with and can appreciate the effort.

At home they host Katya’s work friends and her few older med school friends who come through town every now and then. Trixie enjoys the company. She loves it. She wants more of it.

Their home is a controlled environment. Not in a conceptual way, in a literal way so that her powers can act up and not cause a scene. It cannot be a scene if it happens at home.

Although Trixie can usually spend a few hours outside without breaking store merchandise, causing a car to swerve, or busting open a fire hydrant, the times those things have happened--and they have all happened far more than once--supply her with more than enough anticipation of the next time things go wrong. 

And Trixie is decreasingly enticed by the promise of a few hours of semi-enjoyable public time that drain her whether or not anything happens.

Going outside with Katya is actually the most likely to result in an incident. They flirt, Katya bends a certain way, flips her hair, makes an expression, whatever action or implication that tips some unidentifiable threshold and shit literally starts to fly. Or it just moves. And it’s not as though Trixie needs Katya around to get turned on. Knowing what she has to avoid thinking about makes the task impossible. And sex is everywhere especially when you are trying not to see it. The more aroused Trixie gets, the less control she has.

Or the stronger her telekinetic force becomes. She and Katya do not entirely understand the relationship between Trixie get all tickly inside and cartons of eggs opening up and pelting the stock boy at the grocery store.

And some incidents are more memorable. They are a couple and they do fuck with sex toys, so going to an adult store and leaving when the vibrators all flip on one by one, the dildos crack their display cases trying to break free, and fountains of lube spray the ceiling? The first time was hilarious.

There is something else that keeps Trixie preferring the comforts of their home, or rather avoiding the potential crises of leaving home. 

This is America. For the services she provides, Katya has been harassed by protestors at work, in stores, and--inevitably once they follow her car or find an insider to run her plates--at their houses, each time they moved. Harassment came in the form of graffiti on their cars and property, threatening mail, and for Katya a daily parade of insults, banners, and the occasional lightweight object aimed at her on her way into work.

Katya felt guilty complaining to Trixie, knowing … everything about their deepest shared past.

They finally left the suburbs for good, sought the promise of anonymity in a city. So far it is working well at preventing new harassment where they now live and hope to stay.

They both know pain takes longer to heal than it takes to inflict.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Carrie/Trixie’s hanky is real and I purchased one for myself about a year ago: https://www.etsy.com/listing/499032704/my-favorite-murder-inspired-hanky-funny
> 
> \- Yes I intended the easter egg about Carrie/Trixie winning the crown "unfairly". 
> 
> \- The song lyrics quoted at the beginning are from “You Lost Me” by Sleigh Bells. I had the tune and some lyrics in mind when thinking about Katya’s recurring dream.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When it was over Katya gripped her right cheek with both hands and groaned. She lifted one hand and looked at what she thought would be tears but was just blood from a cut right below her eye. Whipped open by a metal tipped shoelace, perhaps. She looked up at Trixie who sat in her corner with her knees up and her hands bundled around her mouth, waiting for Katya to say something.
> 
> “What the fuck! Tell me what's going on, why are you doing this?” Katya shouted.
> 
> “I’m not, not on purpose.” She cried into her hands and it muffled her words. “Are you okay?”
> 
> “No I’m not okay!” Katya reached for one of the towels on the floor and held it to the trickle of blood under her eye. “And you!” She crawled backwards to get away from Trixie. Once she was on her feet, she pointed at her. “You look like Regan giggling in the corner, free from her straps!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out, more than 2 chapters. And I'm posting it in the middle of the night because I'm literally heading in for surgery this morning. Writing this has been extremely therapeutic. I hope you like it. 
> 
> CW: mild violence. The scene in the summary is the one. I feel like if you read it it’s so deeply couched in absurdity it barely warrants a warning, but I’m okay with being mocked for it. For the scene and the CW. 
> 
> Good luck everyone. Let me know what you think!

**Letters**

 

Sue told her mother it would be easier to deposit their family’s contribution into her checking account so she could combine it with the portion of student loan paid directly to her in the same way. This allowed her to quietly withdraw her spot in campus housing and find a place for herself and Carrie. None of it was a lie, just clever.

 

It was an auspicious start and gave both of them a shot of confidence, feeling like they had stepped off the main path without anyone realizing and without consequence.

 

Sue went home for Thanksgiving that first year, never would again, but Carrie stayed and ate with one of their empty nest neighbors who practically kidnapped her when Sue told them she would be staying by herself for the holiday. She had only just started her job and getting her feet wet with people who had no idea she was anything but a young, sweet girl.

 

The first letter was addressed just to Sue. Handwritten address, no return. Sue recognized the goofy handwriting. Norma. She wanted to apologise for the bummer summer, asked how classes were, asked about boys. Sue got stuck on a peculiar question that was almost a P.S. :

 

_"Chris still doesn't want to talk but she will. She thinks she left something in your car last time we hung out together. I don't remember what it was but keep an eye out?"_

 

Sue tore her car apart. She didn’t tell Carrie about the letter at all, because if she had she would fixate on that detail and it would be impossible to do so without sounding obsessive and paranoid.

 

The next one came from Chris. Sue knew then for sure. She read it anyway:

 

_"Things are pretty basic around here. We’re getting a Krispy Kreme. Won't have to get the stale ones they sell at the bus station. Billy's brother still works there, by the way."_

 

The bus station. They knew Carrie was with her. And she wondered if it made a difference that the first letter arrived when Carrie had been alone over Thanksgiving. To give her the creeps or make her suspicious.

 

It wasn’t much to go on. Sue stuck them in a manila folder and aggressively checked the mail every time she came or went.

 

By Christmas she needed a bull clip to keep the folder shut. By spring break, a bankers box. Not just from Chris and Norma but written in other hands, too.

 

Sue recognized one in particular that broke her heart. Carrie let her cry in her lap that night, didn’t ask what was wrong. Carrie didn’t need to know why Sue needed her when she did. She was just warm and soft, busy with work but never rushing around. She moved slowly and it comforted Sue  

 

The flow of letters would slow and start again. Some cycles would have more letters than others, some with heavier ink as though they couldn’t find their normal pens. Maybe they were just stoned. At some point they got lazy and made photocopies so they could be mailed daily for a couple weeks. Then they would stop for a month. 

 

They were never overtly hostile. Occasionally they were blank pieces of paper. They were simply viral anger.

 

At the end of Sue’s freshman year she took the file to the local police precinct. They told her summer was around the corner and the sending parties would tire of it.

 

Carrie didn’t know about the letters until Sue started her sophomore year. She was furious when Sue finally showed her the full box, organized in hanging folders by month. They fought for two days and the night in between, Sue missed classes and Carrie called out sick from work. Carrie screamed that the whole year had been a lie. Sue cried back that she hid them to protect her. They resolved with a policy to tell each other everything from then on.

 

\--

 

**Moving**

 

In August three years later their house was packed up, all their belongings jammed towards the front door. This was their third rental together and they chose it in a rush to buy them some sanity and help Sue get through senior year. Each time they moved it took at least a couple months before the letters found them again.

 

It was one bedroom on the first floor of a duplex and the landlord’s son lived on the second floor, though he was usually gone overnight. Sue had yet another on again off again boyfriend when they moved in so she got the bedroom and Carrie made do with a pull-out couch in the living room. It was a short term solution and they agreed to accept the temporary suckiness.  

 

The day before, Sue had parked a small moving truck on the curb right outside with a clear path from their door to where the loading ramp would open. They had to roll out of bed, pack the truck first thing and get on the road, headed to a new state where Sue would start medical school in a couple weeks. They had a nice rental set up there that Sue was dying to show Carrie though she kept the details of it hidden.

 

They also had important business to attend to once they arrived at their new location.

 

The latest round of cursed mail had arrived in June.

 

Their tormentors, now only Chris and Norma still going strong, no longer sent even blank letters. Just empty envelopes that bore Carrie and Sue’s names on the front. If they had lost track of their original cause, it was clear they would continue to call out their names in derision. Soon enough they would teach their babies to call them, too.

 

So Sue decided that before her name got any closer to getting locked in by ‘Dr.’, she would change it and she convinced Carrie she had to do the same.

 

It was an easy sell not only because of the letters but because Carrie had begun to take pride in things she herself had created. What she was born with wasn’t all that compelling to cling to. Even her telekinetic powers which she had only ever trusted Sue to see had lost their appeal. She didn’t have much use for them, definitely not at work which was too public and less and less so at home. It was just as easy, if not easier, to flip a pancake with a spatula.

 

Carrie’s sewing skills got her a job as a seamstress right away and in time she had built a small dressmaker clientele. She still made most of her own clothing, perfectly fitted to her measurements. Her specialties--what Sue felt got noticed the most--were her blouses and dresses with precise darts and curved seams that cupped her torso in a way no one was familiar with anymore. Her first customers were Sue’s friends who asked Carrie if she could cook up something to accommodate a ‘weird’ part of their body since nothing ever fit them just right.

 

Carrie loved these conversations. She would talk with them about how it’s the way clothes are bulk produced, how proportions are averaged out for cost that made them think their body was weird. And yes, she could easily make something better.

 

Sue could see a vaguely maternal smile appear when Carrie talked and listened to her peers. It baffled her that Carrie could radiate warmth when she had been deprived of it as soon as her cord was cut. From a distance she observed others soak it up. And when Carrie was alone again, Sue fought the urge to step in and hug her around the side, kiss her cheek and tickle her raunchy fully covered side boob.

 

\--

 

“So if I sleep in the truck do I still have to roll out of bed?” Carrie asked dryly.

 

It was after 11pm. The bathroom and bedroom lights were still on but the living room was lit by the TV and the yellow street lights coming through the large window up front. Sue was trapped under the bright white kitchen bulbs that always seemed to flicker. A row of the dark cheap kitchen cabinets hung from the ceiling above the counter making a frame while she worked. Seeing Sue fret in there was giving Carrie a headache so she stared at the TV. 

 

Sue muttered occasionally about the schedule. She had hoped for an early bedtime but there were still little piles everywhere she looked.

 

For one thing, Carrie’s shoes. Carrie liked keeping them on display, Sue knew that. Her mother had not allowed open shoes just as she had not allowed Carrie to expose skin elsewhere, and while Carrie had hardly ‘rebelled’ or ‘blossomed’ since leaving home she did buy sandals.

 

With a long stretch and a yawn Sue decided the box in front of her was the last one she would do. She announced it with a loud pull of her packing tape gun over the box of clear glass plates and bowls, a sound Carrie winced at. The plates were a pain to keep clean since they showed fingerprints but Sue liked them. Carrie did not enjoy seeing the bottom of her food. 

 

Carrie sat with her legs stretched forward on the pull-out mattress. Sue’s bed and mattress were already dismantled and stacked against the biggest available wall.

 

Sue took a running jump, flipped backwards next to Carrie and the air passing through her nylon running shorts and thighs sounded like a fart upon landing. Carrie hacked a quick laugh. Sue cuddled up to her side, wrapped around her arm with her head in her elbow. Unless Carrie minded, she would sleep in her soggy smelly clothes right there. The ends of her wavy self-trimmed hair were tied in a tiny low bun that hung below her shoulder blades. She wasn’t particularly comfortable like this, just tired and over everything they were about to leave behind. The TV light bounced over their faces.

 

“Ready to go to sleep soon? We have to get the truck packed and pull out by 10am to arrive--”

 

“Hell in a henhouse, I know, Sue. Arrive by 5pm at the latest to pick up the keys.”

 

“Latest!” Sue affirmed with her pointed finger pointing backwards. Carrie grabbed it.

 

“Get your smelly finger out of my smelling zone! I’m ready for bed, you’re not.” Carrie shuffled her body down and tugged her long nightgown with her so it wouldn't ride up.

 

Sue lolled her tongue out concluding this meant she had to wash up to some degree. _If it be her will_.

 

“This looks strangely familiar,” Sue said and grabbed some of Carrie’s nightgown, pale pink with a ruffled yoke, short sleeves. It was hardly a match but she knew Carrie would get what she meant.

 

“Either I was crowned in a nightgown or I sleep in a prom dress, depends how you look at it.” Carrie pinched the fabric at her knees and pulled it straight up making a tent.  “And look, there’s so much room inside it’s like I’m in a bubble.”

 

“I could fit in that bubble,” Sue said, tipping her head back to look at her upside down and wiggle her eyebrows.

 

“Come on in,” Carrie shot back a couple seconds too late for it to be funny or flirty.

 

Every new cycle of letters reminded them that the silent rage lived on. It also drew Carrie and Sue closer.

 

After the big fight when Carrie first found out about the boxed up letters, they slept in each other’s beds. Just for a few nights until Sue suddenly wanted to spend a night at her boyfriend’s. The spell felt broken when she returned.

 

It wasn’t long before a fresh cycle began and Carrie and Sue established their comfort rituals. They washed their sheets and deep cleaned their rooms so either could come visit the other’s day or night and feel healthy. They cleaned out and stocked the fridge with no holds barred, maxing out each of their most recent paychecks. Sue also bought bottles of maximum strength cough syrup, because while Carrie was fully straight edge Sue could settle her nerves with a couple shots of cherry flavored goo.

 

Then Sue would get too busy with school, Carrie with work around a holiday. They would untangle and retreat to normalcy.

 

They had other friends though none penetrated their nucleus. Carrie made two close friends on her own, outside of Sue’s classmates who hung around and came for parties. One was at work and their friendship stayed at the shop.

 

The other was Jinkx, the mother of twin boys in the neighborhood whose sitter was a friend of Sue’s. She admired several custom tops and skirts the sitter wore and when she learned Carrie was the local artisan, she got in touch to ask if she made children’s clothing. Jinkx had purchased some special fabric on a whim. It turned out the fabric wouldn’t work, but Carrie swapped in something she had on hand and promised she could use Jinkx’ material for another project.

 

Jinkx loved the brightly colorful, comfy clothes Carrie made for her boys after years of lamenting all the junk she thrifted in stores that lacked joy and comfort, two things she believed children ought to experience an abundance of. Jinkx quickly picked up that Carrie had experienced little of either as a child. While she mainly aimed to be a good mother for her own children’s sake, it didn’t hurt to dial up the warmth when Carrie was around in hopes she would catch some and keep it for herself.

 

She also became Carrie’s confidante when she needed one about her usual confidante. With her habit of being keenly attuned to the shifting emotions and motivations of people she had to be around everyday, Carrie knew when Sue had fallen in love with her. She just didn’t know what held her back.

 

\--

 

**Names**

 

“I've decided my name will be an ode to the Russian lit classes I squeezed in for humanities credits. I know you enjoyed hearing about them, almost as much as quizzing me for organic chemistry,”

 

“Oh yeah? Let's hear it,” Carrie said before turning off the TV and facing her.

 

Sue scrambled up to her knees on the squeaky mattress, teetering one knee on the bar that went straight through the middle of the folding mechanism. Carrie poised her hands to receive the reveal.

 

“Here goes: Katya!” Sue declared fanning her face with her hands and grinning wide open, sharp cheeks pushed up high.

 

“Oh that's pretty! Is that really Russian?”

 

“Zamolodchikova,” she added slowly in a thick accent, no smile. Carrie shrieked and her long legs flew up with her ecstatic laughter. Since escaping restrictions on earthly pleasures like tasty food, Carrie had grown from a late teen still protected with baby fat into a young woman who consumed decadence at every chance. They didn't get too many chances, but her carnal responses made Sue blush. Her body made Sue blush, too, how it rewarded Carrie’s indulgences with vibrating curves around her legs and butt, her slight B belly, and her fluffy cheeks that stuck around even after her features refined as she entered her 20s.

 

There were smaller changes too that Carrie especially appreciated. Her hair grew in shinier, her skin glowed, and her nails stopped peeling.

 

Witnessing these physical changes all over Carrie's body gave them both a sense of wellbeing. They also gave Sue chewed up lips, a sore wrist, and a state of constant midgrade wetness that caused her to start sleeping naked below the waist.

 

“I'll probably cut the last name to Zamo. I don't knowingly sign up for suffering,” Sue said while Carrie calmed her legs and gasped out a few remaining laughs.

 

“Sounds good. _Katya_.” Carrie tested the new word in her mouth. Sue felt her head get a little heavy. “It's beautiful.”

 

A floor fan rotated next to them and the metal cage went _tick tick tick_ every time it turned away.

 

“Say my name again,” Sue said, feeling a soft thump between her legs.

 

The fan rotated again and tick tick ticked.

 

“Sue?”

 

Sue had planned to have a nice calm talk on the other side of this move, had a whole evening mapped out with contingencies for different responses. She was going to tell Carrie she was hopelessly in love with her. How her timeline with school and residency and financials could work if Carrie would stick it out with her. She felt pretty confident the hopelessly in love part would go over well.

 

“My new name,” she clarified. “If you say it again--I need you to say it again.” She leaned her hands into the mattress beneath her and found herself relaxing her spine and letting her voice drop.

 

“Katya.” Carrie swallowed the ‘-a’, it sank down to her core. The fan picked up a metallic whir.

 

“Katya …

 

Katya …

 

Katya.”

 

Katya opened her eyes feeling like she had drifted off for a moment. She crawled to Carrie’s side and leaned over her, flipped her hair behind her back before planting her hand above Carrie’s shoulder.

 

Carrie smiled and crossed her fingers as she brought her hands over Katya's back, prayed for this dipshit to finally keep up her nerve.

 

Their kiss was smooth, open and wet. Katya used her propped hand to keep some distance. Carrie's hands were free though and she grazed Katya's neck and arm with her nails, knowing what touches Katya liked as a friend. She didn't worry much about her technique but she was a little concerned with losing all restraint so she crossed her legs down to her ankles.

 

When Katya released her mouth and kissed down her jaw whispering ‘love you so much’, Carrie peered over her shoulder to try and get a look at them from above. She liked to imagine how they would look together at different angles. Now she could see for real.

 

Her eyes fluttered and she smiled when she saw Katya’s tiny butt bouncing against her leg. It had to be okay to find such a sweet thing so adorable _and_ so sexy, and Carrie thought she could ask Katya afterwards if it was normal to feel both ways. She kissed her hair thinking she could get to her ear and then pulled Katya’s face back up to kiss her mouth again. Then she felt the slight itch of wetness slipping out even though her legs were pressed tight, thinking what Katya could do with her in five minutes.

 

The house was silent except for the ticking fan. Katya glanced back to the kitchen when she thought she heard glass clinking, figured it could have been the neighbor pulling into their driveway with his big ass truck causing a vibration. Carrie pulled her back down.

 

Aside from that, the squeak of the pull-out frame when Katya shifted, the rustle of Carrie’s pillow, heavy breaths, tongues snapping.

 

Then the volume dialed all the way up.

 

Katya squashed Carrie’s breasts together and moaned under them, bit a wet mark into the nightgown fabric. Carrie cried out from the warm rush and scratched up the backs of Katya's slippery thighs. Katya laughed at the tickle and Carrie pouted.

 

“It’s good, you’re doing so good. I mean it doesn’t even matter to me but shit, you’re giving me multiple skin orgasms.”

 

“Oh.”

 

In the kitchen, the last box Katya had packed twirled slowly mid-air underneath the flickering white light.

 

Katya's reaction was slow. She knew something was wrong when she saw Carrie glaring over her shoulder into the kitchen, her brown irises frozen inside bulging whites. Then Carrie screamed.

 

The box crashed onto the floor, heavy shattered glass muffled inside cardboard. Carrie cried and Katya turned herself around so she could face all the rooms.

 

She looked back to Carrie who was already calming herself with pursed lips and deep breaths.

 

“Did you really hate the plates that much?” Katya asked, pointing a long curved thumb at the box.

 

“Sorry?”

 

“I’m just saying,” Katya grinned and held her hand up in defense, “you picked a perfect moment for them to meet their demise, when I’m happily kneading your titty skin like a cat.”

 

Carrie crossed her arms and wiped her tears away with one hand. “Titty skin?” she repeated with her eyes slitted.

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing,” Carrie shook her head, trying not to smile. Katya crawled over her and poked at her to make her give it up. “You could be a titty bit more tactful.”

 

Katya barked a laugh. “Nope!” She kissed Carrie again.

 

“Mmm can you go take a look and then we can … really do this? Kinda getting desperate,” Carrie said quietly.

 

“Desperate?”

 

“Wet, Katya,” Carrie said looking straight into her eyes. Katya pursed her lips for a dry kiss then stuck her slobbering tongue in Carrie’s mouth.

 

She stood up and walked over to the kitchen to check for ouija boards or rosaries or little people dressed in red coats, any sign of something truly concerning. She hid her slight fear that an intruder could legitimately be hiding around the corner, easier to do because the incident was nowhere near inexplicable: in a house where a telekinetic person lived, a box of dishes had dropped to the floor.

 

“You didn’t have any control over this?” Katya asked as she checked the scene.

 

Carrie felt her mouth slightly tremble. Katya had never distrusted her. She wasn't sure this was distrust or fear. Or which was preferable.

 

“I didn’t do anything consciously. Maybe we should put up more of your ugly shit and see if it happens again.”

 

“Oh yeah?” Katya taunted through the frame between the overhead cabinets and the counter.

 

“Let's get the last three receding hairlines you dated to sit up there.”

 

Katya grabbed her knees and laughed. “I date intelligent people with large foreheads!”

 

“Oh, _people_ is it--” Carrie sensed the proverbial line and stopped herself. Katya scratched her nose and nodded. She returned to the couch, leaned over Carrie and pointed back and forth between her breasts with her index finger. Carrie chuckled an affirmative and gasped when Katya fully straddled her.

 

“Boobs, holy shit so much of them,” Katya murmured under her cleavage.

 

“Kurt Vonnegut, ladies and gentlemen.”

 

Katya's face popped up with a vein bulging in her forehead from silently laughing.

 

“Hey--it’s Katya Vonnegut. Kurt is fine though, my teets don’t mind being disregarded.”

 

Carrie fingered around the shoulders of Katya’s sports bra. No one would call Katya modest, and it was for that reason that Carrie knew she tended to keep her chest covered in bed among other sex life details she had not asked for over the years.

 

“Katya,” Carrie said firmly enough to make her pause. “Leave it on or take it off, I don’t mind.”

 

Katya whipped it off and sat straight up with her hands proudly on her waist, some of her hair fallen forward. Carrie reached and pushed some behind her ears to see her sharp cheeks and pale watercolor eyes. Her wispy eyebrows, sharp from being zealously plucked. Everything about her, really. 

 

“Everything about you, I want.”

 

Carrie rubbed her fingertips down Katya's sternum picking up oil from her unwashed skin, then spread her fingers out and crossed her tiny pink nipples. She crossed them again, harder, and they swelled bigger and darker.

 

 _Katya_.

 

The ripple through Katya’s muscles drove Carrie to drop her right hand and slip it through the leg of her shredded running shorts. She locked in on Katya’s shocked face and curled lips as she worked under the soaked liner, peeling it away from her vulva and fingering through her, searching in warm plentiful come. 

 

Katya pressed them into the right spot for her and quickly rutted over them. Carrie looked all over her open mouth, the shape of her lips where they swelled around a dip in the middle, and the top of her slick tongue.

 

“There you go,” Carrie said in a buzzy voice she'd only ever used alone before. She took over once she got Katya’s rhythm. “Good?”

 

“Yeah, so good,” Katya moaned appreciatively with a choke.

 

“Jesus that fan is loud,” Carrie muttered with an irritated laugh as the tick tick tick of the fan grew louder and more metallically shrill. The disturbance made it difficult to be rapt though she wanted to, watching Katya’s hips circle and her hands run up and down her sides.

 

“Baby, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming,” Katya whimpered, a little heartbroken. She pitched forward and crushed Carrie's ribs with her hands. Carrie watched her stomach contract and her mouth round over short clumsy groans.

 

Once Katya was totally finished she pulled back from Carrie's bruised middle. Carrie let her hand relax and Katya continued to glide and squeeze over her wrist. The sensations, her languid, serpentine movements and sweet scent drove Carrie wild until Katya slowed and then stopped, slumped over wordlessly. 

 

Carrie pulled her hand back, used her nightgown to wipe up to her elbow for good measure. She inspected under her nails, picked the residue under them in the silence.

 

“Why do you look so sad?” she asked after she scraped too far under a nail, making it bleed and sting.

 

“I'm not sad, I'm mad at myself. I have this whole … stupid thing. At our new place. I--” Katya’s face crumbled and she burst into tears. It was not Carrie’s immediate instinct to comfort her through another one of her Clark Griswold-esque crises.

 

“There’s this letter I wrote for you. There are gonna be flowers, I ordered groceries too that they deliver in advance so we can just get there and relax.” She smoothed back her puffy humidity-addled hair. “Like we arrive and I cover your eyes and then I uncover them and it's our new life.”

 

“A letter?”

 

“Because I’m in love with you, and I want to start treating you like it.”

 

“I know,” Carrie said and put her hand out gently to settle her. “But a letter?”

 

“You _know_?”

 

“Of course I know. I don't need a letter about it. Burn it up.” Carrie reached both of her pretty, muscled hands up to Katya’s face. “Just do it, be in love with me.”

 

Katya let herself be pulled down and wrapped her naked top and practically naked lower half around Carrie's warm, pink cotton body. For all her softness, Carrie had strong hands and arms from sewing and hauling stacks and bolts of fabric. Knowing how nimble and strong her hands were had enriched Katya’s fantasies in their last two houses.   

 

Katya murmured into Carrie’s neck. “But it explains how we’ll be happy now. I have so much figured out and it's all in there.”

 

“I've been happy since you gave me that note in homeroom,” Carrie said. Katya kissed her neck over and over. “Don’t make me read a dissertation. Show me you’re in love with me.”

 

Katya smiled to herself and realized how much snot and tears she had leaked all over Carrie’s hair. She found her bra and wiped her wet nose and face on it before hurling it at the noisy fan which spat it back in an arc before it landed on the floor.

 

“Hey,” she croaked with a post-cry voice. “You have your name picked out?”

 

Carrie smiled and nodded. Then she started to giggle.

 

“Alright out with it, what goofy shit did you come up with?” Katya asked, wiggling Carrie’s hips under her own.

 

“Trixie!” she said with sparkle eyes. Katya didn't react for what felt close to a full minute. “You know what, I said yours was pretty,” Carrie finally said and tossed Katya off to the side.

 

“Shit, I’m sorry. Please tell me more.” Carrie lay still with her hands in her lap. “I'm sorry,” Katya repeated and finger combed through the snotty patch of hair fanned over Carrie’s pink ruffle covered bicep.

 

“Clean up that box and shut off the lights? I’d like to go to sleep.”

 

“Yeah alright,” Katya said already halfway up, resigned to her doghouse for the night. Now she really was mad at herself.

 

When Katya got up, a waft of her scent hit Carrie’s nose and tongue.

 

She followed Katya's lean arms and bony spine down to her wiry calves and toes fully flexed while she tiptoed around the floor where the glass had shattered, avoiding possible shards.

 

Having barely moved the entire evening, she spread her legs and squeezed herself through her nightgown. Once she felt a steady thrum, she gave herself a hard pat. Then another. Each one made her mind quiet. The sound was hardly anything, just her hand on multiple layers of cloth over her skin; but underneath she felt herself transform.

 

“I like it because it's pretty and just a teeny tiny bit slutty at the same time,” Trixie said evenly. Her voice sounded more clear in her head than it ever had.

 

Katya returned having shut off the lights with her hair pulled back in her hands, searching for an elastic as she approached. She let her hair go and scraped her palms down her neck, staring between Trixie’s open mouth and her fingers lined up and pressed neatly over her cunt.

 

Trixie gave herself another hard pat.

 

“Pretty and a bit slutty,” Katya repeated.

 

“Momma hated both,” Trixie smiled. “Almost as much as she hated me.”

 

Katya snorted and kneeled at her feet. “Rotted monster,” she called her with nostalgia for the first time she realized who she had found. “So _Trixie_ \--God, what have I done to deserve this--what'll your last name be?”

 

“Oh, Mattel.”

 

“Mattel, huh? So I can twist yer legs and pop yer head off?” Katya said in a thin creaky voice as she crept between Trixie’s legs.

 

Trixie looked down at her. “What are you talking about? Little girls love Barbie. They'd never hurt her.”

 

Katya’s stomach lurched. Trixie wobbled her chin and then grinned wide and sinister.

 

“Trixie Mattel,” Katya wheezed while her chest bounced with laughter, “you are a pig from hell.”

 

They fought to find the bottom of the nightgown, hiking all of it up in a heap over her waist with her legs parted. Trixie thought of how her white 100% cotton underwear showed Katya nothing, no hint of how close to bursting she was underneath. Nothing like whatever split crotch porno panties Katya may have dreamed about while pathetically jerking off whimpering _‘Carrie, oh Carrie ...’_

 

Katya rested her head against Trixie’s knee and stroked the gusset.

 

“Take them off, don’t go slow.”

 

Katya glanced up from where she was mesmerized. “Excuse me, I can take some control--”

 

“Oh my god! Take off my panties, fuck me, the pining for my pussy is over.” Trixie tapped her wrist like a watch.

 

“Over?”

 

“Over.”

 

“Really?”

 

“I’m serious.” Trixie looked down at Katya grinning back at her. “Throw me into the shower after because I'll be that disgusting.”

 

“God you’re a lot,” Katya muttered as she hooked her fingers under the waistband and pulled down. She struggled to get them off Trixie’s hips and paused a moment to gaze at them, bare and big, bigger than they looked in clothes. Then she pulled them hard over her ass and thighs. Trixie complained at how hard she pulled them and Katya left them there around her knees.

 

“Hold these for me?” she said and hoisted up Trixie’s long, heavy legs to hand off to her like a pair of skis. Trixie grasped behind her knees and held her legs up, looked at Katya the way she would before slamming the refrigerator door. “Gee, thanks!”

 

\--

 

**Cacophony**

 

In the rental house that awaited them across state lines, Katya had done all she could to make a nest for them. The second bedroom would be a sewing room. Big enough to keep a bed in there for guests when they were ready to have them. And to be Katya’s doghouse. Considering the arguments they had in friendship, Katya would surely (still) need a place to retreat if they were a couple.

 

Here in the home they had mere hours left in, the bathroom was empty except for toothbrushes and toothpaste, a single water glass.

 

The kitchen cabinets and drawers were empty. The counter was cleared now that the box of dishes was gone, hauled out back.

 

The bedroom was totally empty.

 

The living room looked like a storage unit with stacks of packed boxes of clothing, books, kitchen supplies. Collections of things like Katya's jar of plastic fetal parts from home--her ‘toys’, as her mom called them--and other fanatical anti-choice ephemera she had snagged while volunteering at Planned Parenthood; Trixie’s recent acquisition of decorative crosses which now seemed more like lowercase ‘t’s. Bins of fabric, caddies of thread, scissors and needles, two sewing machines and bags of miscellaneous supplies. They didn't own much big stuff yet, just some shelves, the TV and the unit it stood on. The sharp edges had bath towels folded across to protect them in the truck.

 

“Fuck!” Trixie shouted with her blonde head ground into the uncushioned back of the couch. Katya fingered her faster than what looked appealing. As she pumped her with slender fingers that had handwritten a 20 year plan in a letter that Trixie had told her to burn, when it started to look sweet and tender, Katya went in harder or changed her angle. Trixie rewarded her with a cry of praise and a trickle of come in her palm.

 

Katya saw she could fit another finger now but she liked seeing around them, the empty space when she pulled her fingers aside for a second so her entrance would gape a little and drip with more fluid.

 

“Oh ye--yeah pull me open.” Trixie’s voice trembled. She clumsily held her legs up with one arm and rubbed over her clit with her free hand. 

 

 _It’s gotta come out_ Katya thought as she reached into her running shorts, _I need it._ Katya filled the space with her tongue and swallowed as much as she could while the rest flowed over her lips into her nose and down her chin. Trixie’s fingers crept down and she slipped her tongue between them, sucked them, slammed into her extra hard, erratically, and feathered over her own clit because she could barely take any stimulation. She had another orgasm without telling Trixie. 

 

“Oh yes, your tongue! Making me come,” Trixie panted before her hands slipped from the backs of her knees and her legs shook down. Katya moaned at the soft backs of her thighs closing around her neck.

 

They sucked in air and ducked their heads against a deafening clash of rattles, jingles, and heavy thuds that pounded the floor. Their boxes were all tipped over, shifted, split open.

 

All the towels used for cushioning furniture were strewn across the floor like empty ghost costumes, one of them right up to the edge of the couch.

 

“How did this get here?” Katya asked after plucking her head out from Trixie’s thighs in a daze, looking down at the towel.

 

Trixie propped herself on her elbows to look.

 

“They floated,” she said and immediately regretted it, fell back again.

 

“Thank you, obvious! I get that it means nothing to you but this scares me! This possessed towel nearly touched me,” Katya grimaced while pinching it and flinging it away.

 

“I know.” Trixie wiped the corners of her eyes. “Please, I only need a little more, I was nearly there.” Trixie stretched out her fingers for Katya’s attention.

 

Katya turned her face straight back into Trixie’s cunt, now more red than pink as she sucked at her fingers. Up above she saw Trixie’s hands resting by her eyes, her face concentrated on taking the pleasure she could get without Katya giving her any while a thick line of tears stood at the edges of her lashes.

 

Despite Trixie’s protesting sobs, Katya pulled out but only to quickly take her underwear all the way off. She pushed Trixie’s thighs wide apart and smirked at the web of milky come.

 

“Gonna pop your needy pussy like bubble gum,” Katya promised in the dark as she curled her fingertips back into her once more, right before a flock of Trixie’s espadrilles, platforms, and wedge heels pummeled her from the living room.

 

Katya covered her face and used her other arm to guard her torso. Trixie scrambled into the corner of the couch screaming.

 

When it was over Katya gripped her right cheek with both hands and groaned. She lifted one hand and looked at what she thought would be tears but was just blood from a cut right below her eye. Whipped open by a metal tipped shoelace, perhaps. She looked up at Trixie who sat in her corner with her knees up and her hands bundled around her mouth, waiting for Katya to say something.

 

“What the fuck! Tell me what's going on, why are you doing this?” Katya shouted.

 

“I’m not, not on purpose.” She cried into her hands and it muffled her words. “Are you okay?”

 

“No I’m not okay!” Katya reached for one of the towels on the floor and held it to the trickle of blood under her eye. “And you!” She crawled backwards to get away from Trixie. Once she was on her feet, she pointed at her. “You look like Regan giggling in the corner, free from her straps!”

 

Trixie looked down at herself and shrugged. “I'm sorry, Katya. I'm so sorry, but I'm not trying to hurt you,” Trixie insisted as she got to her feet and watched Katya back away from her.

 

“Are you mad at me for making us move so far away?”

 

Trixie paused. “You're not making me do anything. Cool it with the daddy knows best act.”

 

“Okay. I know you hated whenever I had a boyfriend.”

 

“Oh God, just shut up,” Trixie said as she passed Katya to go pick up her shoes. Katya followed close behind her.

 

“Do you think me having a girlfriend would have been better? I could never do that to you.”

 

“Stop acting like you live to protect me,” Trixie spat back. “You got what you needed without being enough of a jerk to lose me.” Katya’s skin crawled. “That's us, right? You’re an asshole, then you make a grand gesture to sweep me off my feet?”

 

If they went that far down they might never make it back again. Katya reached for her hands and Trixie let her take them. For a few seconds Katya could be slow and careful.

 

“An asshole? Really?”

 

Then she ran her hands up Trixie’s arms and around her back and pressed herself into her chest. She kissed her neck and told her again how much she loved her, how in love she was, how everything would be good. She stood on her toes in just her worn out junior varsity track shorts, pleading and kissing. She wished Trixie would squeeze her back.

 

Katya didn’t need to look when Trixie flinched at the wrought iron coat rack hurtling towards them. She pushed her into the empty bedroom just in time and shut the door quietly. When she turned around Trixie stood in the middle with her hands locked behind her head, hugging herself.

 

“You were wrong, Sue. They were right, always. There’s something wrong with me.” Katya stepped towards Trixie and took her hands again, and again she gave them easily. She didn’t always. It took time to earn that trust. “I’ll turn myself in, see a doctor and let them figure out what kind of monster I am.”

 

Katya swallowed a laugh and was grateful the room was so dark her eye roll could not be perceived.

 

“That is ... _slightly_ dramatic.”

 

“You can’t handle this.”

 

“Yeah I can. I could live without you, I just don’t want to. Your shit can’t kill me, I have the physique of a cockroach for a reason.”

 

That finally got a laugh from Trixie and she put her hands on Katya’s chest. 

 

“Okay, you’re not allowed to jerk off and lock me out of the safe room. That’s one rule. We’ll figure out the rest.” Trixie nodded enthusiastically. “You really think I'm an asshole?”

 

“Not every minute of the day. Don't judge what I say when I'm angry and scared, and inconsolably horny.”

 

The carpet in the room was a standard high pile light brown, vacuumed but permanently dingy. They lay down with no pillow or blanket and Katya kissed Trixie while she gently made her come. Trixie clasped her hands over Katya’s ears to muffle the sounds of their destroyed possessions rising up again for another whirl through the house outside. They jumped whenever something heavy hit the wall, but they didn’t let it stop them.

 

Katya lay over Trixie’s chest to keep her bare skin off the carpet and fell asleep there right away with Trixie’s hand covering her face. Trixie stayed awake listening to be sure everything was settled. The house stayed quiet.

 

\--

 

**New Day**

 

It took no time to pack the truck. Trixie’s sewing equipment and materials were a priority. Of the rest, they grabbed the minimums that sat on the surface and spared themselves rummaging deeper into the chaos.

 

They had enough time now for one last breakfast at their favorite place and Trixie ordered a milkshake. When the waitress cocked an eyebrow at the early morning request, Katya cocked hers right back and added ‘extra thick’. It raised the hairs on Trixie’s neck and she smiled looking up at Katya through her lashes.

 

Katya marveled that Trixie had put on the little bit of makeup she had begun to wear and fixed her hair as usual--down, fluffy, backcombed and pinned up at the front. She looked serene and modest (her skirts had pleats now), her usual self.

 

While Trixie wrapped her lips around the straw and sucked hard at the extra thick shake in the background, an image that would have consumed her yesterday, Katya's mind raced elsewhere. She was barely up for the drive. They had each slept for four, maybe five cumulative hours from waking up repeatedly. When Trixie had to pee first thing in the morning she woke Katya to go into the bathroom with her and they stayed awake because they couldn’t unsee the wreckage.

 

“Trixie?” She waited for her to give up on the lump of ice cream her straw was stuck on. It was a skinny straw that couldn't handle the task. “There’s something bothering me about last night.”

 

Trixie widened her eyes and huffed a ‘yeah no shit’ agreement.

 

“We love each other, that’s not new. I’m really proud of you as a friend,” Katya said, trying hard not to resort to a joke. She handed Trixie a spoon for the shake. “That’s why I’d stick with you, even if I wasn’t in love with you.”

 

\--

 

Katya paid while Trixie climbed up into the cab of the truck, and when she climbed the steps on the driver’s side Trixie reached over to pull her in. She checked her watch as she placed the key in the ignition and clicked her tongue over her back teeth in satisfaction. It was 9:45, they were getting on the road 15 minutes early.

 

They had left behind an apology note for their landlord with all the cash they had in their wallets to add to the security deposit. They wouldn't forfeit the title of worst tenants in that landlord's history of renting to the college aged crowd for another decade, when an actual murder was committed in that house. 

 

Once they joined the highway, still a bit sluggish with the late morning commute, Trixie looked over at Katya in her tank top and loose jeans, She was practically bent onto the wheel. She had kicked off one of her Camper sneakers to operate the pedals with her bare foot since she could reach them but not as closely as she liked. The contact gave her better control. She never once suggested that Trixie drive, which Trixie considered feeling offended by but knew it was pointless.

 

“Hey,” she said softly, leaning across the bench seat and placing her fingers on Katya’s right shoulder, pulling it back. “It’s a long drive, relax.”

 

When Katya obeyed, Trixie cuddled into her shoulder and put her hand on her chest. She drew circles over her shirt and kept her fingers safely in the center although Katya kept squirming and whining anyway.

 

“You’re really making me drive the whole way with a boner?”

 

“Ha! Not my problem, I just like your body. Finally I can touch you. It’s okay, right?”

 

“Oh yes, you can touch me. Gonna be your problem when we get there though.”

 

“Not if I throw this truck off the highway.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I mentioned at the start I'm having surgery today and I don't know when I will be able to work on the next chapter. But working on it is really addictive so that's a positive. 
> 
> I like to keep the era stretchy though there are brand clues. And just for culture. Sue/Katya is such a shoe dyke. Is shoe dyke a worthy tag? 
> 
> Thank you so much for the support on the first chapter, I was so overwhelmed for the love this weird little story got :')


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “When I look at you, and when I touch you, you're beautiful and perfect.” It was the sweetest thing and Katya believed her. She didn’t say everything she felt but she didn’t say things just because. “And you made me feel loved.” 
> 
> Katya smiled in earnest, finally. “Even when I was being gross?” 
> 
> “Actually, yeah. All of it. Please stop saying ‘gross’. We have enough enemies.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***New note: this fic is very much not abandoned :) :) :) it is on hiatus. I'm reworking it to my liking because I adore it. I want to finish by Fall 2019.*** 
> 
> Hi, I'm the reverse engineer of this story, back with a really long new chapter! 
> 
> Spoiler: no smut but lots of affection and story. 
> 
> This is a non linear story (planned←lie) so first we go back to high school, find out what they did after prom. Then it returns to where the last chapter ended, the quiet aftermath of the chaos that ensued. 
> 
> Next one will be a time jump. I think this will end up about five chapters.
> 
> I like comments and you’re welcome to visit me on tumblr, I’m not leaving! mattepinkallshades :)

_And if I shed a tear I won't cage it.  
I won't fear love. _

 

**After prom**

 

As they left the gymnasium and walked the wide concrete steps down to the school parking lot, Sue realized she hadn't thought about where to go or what to do afterwards. She hadn't been totally sure it would all come together. She was confident in her plan, but not _sure_ sure.

 

Once Sue had unrigged the bucket the night before, the last and most critical item on the list of preparations, she'd barely been able to sit down. She buzzed on the anticipation and rode high on the hope that she might be fully redeemed at the end of this. The end being less than a day away.

 

Now she was left with Carrie and nowhere to go.

 

They looked down at the gym at the top of the sloped parking lot. Sue had parked near the far end since she had slunk in late, under the radar. 

 

“So,” Carrie started, shifting in her low heels and synthetic pink cocoon. The parking lot lights were cold and unkind to the contrasting finishes on her dress and the matte shine on the cheap pearls and grosgrain bows. The silhouette of the feathers looked costumish and Sue couldn't wait to see her in normal clothes again. 

 

Sue took a step closer in her worn down corduroys and a red zippered cardigan with ‘Russia’ printed across it in white. She had on her new tennis shoes, white Onitsuka Tigers with red and blue stripes. She had begged her mother for them as an early birthday present, citing being dateless and sad for prom. The cardigan came from a thrift shop and she wore it because she knew her mother believed she was funny, whatever that might mean. At the last minute she’d put on her larger silver hoop earrings and mascara.

 

“I'll take you home? That thing’ll start falling apart,” Sue said, brushing a feather that floated away from the rest.

 

“Excuse me? Your gluey beads and bows might pop off but I made this thing to survive.” Carrie flicked the tail of one of the bows. 

 

“What did you expect to survive, an A-bomb?” Sue laughed, swaying back with her arms crossed. Carrie sucked in her cheek. “Does your mom expect you home?” Carrie smiled at Sue in a way that implied she had missed a whole lot by asking that question.

 

“She didn't expect me to go at all. Now, an hour or three, all the same.” Sue’s eyes went wider and Carrie looked down. “But now is fine.”

 

“Oh I didn't mean that. Let’s stay out together.” Carrie did not seem to fear her mother the way Sue expected. It was sort of impressive considering the rest of the town tended to abandon their grocery carts once they realized Margaret White had entered the building.

 

Sue knew where they could disappear for a while before the other prom goers could catch up with them and spoil it.

 

\--

 

Barns and stalls remained unoccupied and unlocked on the county fairgrounds year round, though it would all look festive in the summer with tents and lights and rides. Still, it was the best spot Sue could think of so they drove along the flat highway with few other cars on the road. Everyone was home or still at prom.

 

The fairgrounds was one of their town’s loafing spots that required no invitation, unlike properties that all belonged to someone’s uncle or grandfather. Sue knew of plenty of those, too, but no way would she bring Carrie to any of them. Aside from her immediate crowd, the other kids would probably see them together and flock to Carrie, absorb her into the amoeba after taking Sue’s proximity as a sign of approval. She didn’t want to let that happen, even if it was selfish to keep her to herself.

 

“Momma wasn't always that way. She was a real hippie.” The drive took about thirty minutes and Sue found it wasn’t hard at all to get Carrie talking about her mother. “She doesn’t hide it, she uses it to warn me about the drugs and sex and diseases. That was all before she met my dad.”

 

Along the drive they passed green farmlands and crisp red and white storybook barns. Behind one of them was a private road leading to an enclosed vintage car garage belonging to Tommy's best friend's father. A couple Aston Martins, an old Volkswagen bug, a Rolls Royce of course. It smelled of the chemicals and small machinery used to beautify cars, old rags soaked in compound, and Fast Orange hand cleaner. There was a lacquered concrete pavilion inside the enclosure built for grown men to socialize on a set of dark, almost black red tufted leather couches and armchairs, polished to the point of glinting with the same sparkle as the cars. Especially under the bright showroom lights. 

 

“She hoped I'd be a boy, you know?” Trixie’s lipstick had worn off and she didn’t apply more. Sue only noticed because her old friends fixed their lipstick throughout the night to the point of compulsion. “All of my clothes through age three or so were for a boy, and she kept my hair short. She's convinced his family wouldn't have let her take me away from them if they found out I was a girl. That's around when my dad left us and went back to them. I don’t know what’s true.”

 

The garage was where the Valentine's Day party had been, just a group of ten or twelve friends, and after everyone had gone Tommy had produced a large bouquet of red and white roses for Sue. She had been shocked at their size and embarrassed because she’d decided months earlier that she didn't want to be with him anymore. She cheated on him, he forgave her. That bought him some time because she felt too guilty to dump him after that. Then it was late January and the red lace hearts were already up in the hallways and he crushed her hand so tightly she thought it might cut off the blood supply to her arm.

 

The roses were not Sue’s taste. Of all the color combinations they were just so … grocery store. She wouldn't have thought about it but she disliked him so deeply by then they could have been a bouquet of squirrel tails and she wouldn't have laughed. At one time that had been an inside joke. She did like him for a minute, in the beginning.

 

Regardless, she agreed to a romp on the couch. She'd put on the makeup, barrettes in her hair, made the effort. It was good.

 

“Sue!” Carrie shouted just before Sue corrected the wheel to drive straight on the road. The garage was already a mile behind them.

 

“Shit. I'm so sorry, you okay?”

 

“Yes. Are you sure you don't want to take me home now? You don't have to--”

 

“Yeah I'm sure.” Sue pressed the accelerator and came back up to speed.

 

\--

 

“This, I think, is where they set up the strength tester thing where you whack the button with a mallet to see if you can ring the bell at the top.” Sue walked backwards and held her hair behind her ears looking for a scar in the ground to confirm she was right. Her hoops dangled on her cheeks and she smiled, felt pretty.

 

“A big mallet on a button? It doesn't just explode?” Sue coughed and grasped her stomach. She couldn't tell for anything if Carrie was making innuendo. “So did Tommy ring the bell?” she asked when Sue didn’t reply.

 

“What?” Sue squeaked through a bubble in her throat which she coughed again to clear. She swore she heard a lilt in Carrie’s voice when she said ‘bell’. “He did, yes. A frog, he won me a bright green stuffed frog. With lots of heavy eyeshadow and lipstick and bumpy warts. It was actually kind of cool,” she recalled with more fondness for whatever buttons and levers had produced the frog than for anything Tommy did. “I still have it.”

 

Carrie looked around at all the emptiness in the dark. Sue’s headlights didn't reach as far into the tall uncut grass as they were and Sue offered her hand when Carrie wobbled on her heels. She wasn't sure why she kept going all the way to the deepest end or why Carrie walked with her without question. The only reason was the further out they went the longer it would take to turn around. And that was nice, to walk for longer.

 

“I can understand wanting to have someone,” Carrie said all of a sudden. The open air was so empty the sound of her voice was perfectly clear, soft and warm.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Tommy. Maybe he's not that great. But he’s not nobody.” Carrie had begun to untangle the heavy hairspray by combing her fingers through her thick blonde waves. She left the big frozen curls intact at the front. Sue jumped in front of her to see if she could fit her fist through one of those curls, and Carrie kneeled a little with breathy giggles so Sue could reach.

 

“I don’t miss him,” Sue said, still laughing a little from touching Carrie's stiff hair. It tickled her knuckles. “It’s complicated.”

 

“I mean you don't have to feel bad for being with him in the first place.” They had made a loop and started to walk back to the car. The warm air started to make Sue’s skin tingle and she felt sick and damp.

 

“Thanks. Not like I planned to marry the guy, or have his kids even.”

 

“Ha! Momma says that's punishment for sin, childbirth. Or just having a child is punishment, in general,” Carrie laughed. Sue’s stomach tightened and she felt a cramp. Nothing had felt quite right in there for weeks. She stopped Carrie again, placed her hand on the scratchy pink sleeve of her dress. Rubbing it created a sensation like scratching denim, something Sue couldn’t tolerate when classmates did it at their desks.

 

“Your mom really says shit like that to you? Are you serious or being weird?” As she dragged her hand down Carrie’s arm the lump of a large plastic pearl sank into her clammy palm. She knew she was going to throw up. The dial was cracked on each of her senses.

 

“She's a sick person,” Carrie answered. She pulled her arm from Sue’s weak grip. “I don't want to be around her anymore, but I'm already worried about what’ll happen when I'm gone. Whatever my dad and his family did, it … ” Carrie struggled with the right words but made destructive motions with her hands that made sense. They began to walk again.

 

“I heard her listen to this old Van Morrison song once. Just once, just the one song when I was sent home after a fight in school and she wasn't expecting me. There was a line in it about a boy with little red shoes. That's when I knew it's not her fault.”

 

“What’s not her fault?” Sue barked out quickly, swallowed an air bubble against the churn in her stomach.

 

“None of it. Momma doesn't allow red in the house. And I'm not a boy. She's really unhappy, lonely, and she doesn’t trust anyone but people in the Bible. And they're not real.” Carrie shrugged like it was all simple and harmless to her. Sue didn't know much about her parents before she was born beyond photo albums. 

 

“Why did the school send you home after a fight? Did you start it?” Sue asked. She thought talking more might quell the nausea tapping at her throat.

 

“Heck no. I asked them to. Easier than the other person getting punished and coming back to give it to me worse than before.”

 

Sue clenched her teeth but her stomach convulsed and she turned away hurling foamy bile into the grass. They hadn't eaten or had anything to drink, and if the fair were there then there would have been plenty but now it was barren. Her stomach seemed intent on searching every part of her for something to expel until her knees burned and went numb, sending her slowly onto her hands in the dry earth.

 

Once Sue went down, Carrie leaned to her and experimentally reached to touch her back with her palm firmly cupped. Sue had touched her many times before, enough that Carrie had stopped feeling shocked each time. Sue knew how. She seemed to Carrie like a very touchy feely person. But Carrie didn't know what would happen if she was the one to initiate. If her hand would be too hard. If she would touch the right spot.

 

Carrie never had a pet to cuddle. By a pond where there were no other children because one had drowned there many years earlier, Carrie used to sneak off to play with turtles sunning themselves on the rocks. When she touched their soft necks or even their scaly feet they would withdraw no matter how gentle she tried to be, and she would hug herself and patiently wait for them to come back out.

 

She softened her hand as Sue breathed under it. She could feel Sue’s lungs fill under her cardigan. 

 

“Sue? Sue?”

 

“I’m okay,” Sue said with a thin voice. She coughed and wiped the corners of her mouth, wished she had cleaned her fingers off first. “Just practicing being a disposed body.”

 

“Oh. Want a push?” Sue laughed and swung around to grab Carrie’s shoulders with her dusty hands. They climbed their way up to standing and Sue brushed off Carrie’s dress from where her hands had made it dirty.

 

“Let's get back to the car.” Sue discreetly wiped her nose with her cardigan cuff. She had felt self-conscious about her poor manners in the past, at least the ones her mother harped on, but this time she felt something new. Like panic. She gripped the cuff with her fingers and scraped it off on her cords, held her arms straight down instead of letting them swing while she walked a few steps ahead of Carrie towards the beams of a couple new sets of headlights pulling in.

 

\--

 

After they stopped at the drive-in for shakes and judged the fashions strutting and lumbering back and forth, Carrie said she didn’t mind walking from Sue’s place if she wanted to head straight home. Sue insisted on dropping her off at her door.

 

They parked just ahead of Carrie's house. It was one of the smaller ones on the block with old white paint and two floors. Margaret rented out the top floor for extra income and it had a separate entrance and outside staircase, added on by generous parishioners when Carrie was ten years old at Margaret’s urgent request. Her neighborhood was in the older part of town filled with these sorts of peeling, cracked doorway wooden houses packed tightly together. Not like Sue’s neighborhood, which was a new-ish development with brick ranch style homes, all on one level. No one there intended to have renters.

 

Carrie asked what song was playing, a song that had repeated a few times. She was stretching her toes with her heels off, draining the last of her milkshake. Sue handed her the CD case for _Fumbling Towards Ecstasy_ , from which the title track was playing.

 

“Standard issue pseudo lesbo jams, so … it materialized in my backseat with the others.” Sue clucked her teeth in a way that felt cool.

 

“Is that so?” Carrie asked with no hesitation, turning to look back at the overstuffed Case Logic, running sneakers tinged green from spring grass, and a very large hooded sweatshirt.

 

She heard Sue yawn and turned back around. “I'm tired, too,” Carrie said quickly. It wasn't like her usual tone and Sue was puzzled. Carrie spoke smoothly and oddly confidently, even if she was only just beginning to lift her eyes from the ground. “We pulled it off.” That sounded like her.

 

“We did,” Sue said, eyebrows raised with a conspiratorial grin. She leaned her head back on the headrest and looked down to Carrie's hands, folded near the console between them. She still wore the corsage of red and white roses Tommy had given her.

 

Carrie's nails were short, chronically chipped and shredding by her account. Still, she had painted them a very pale pink and they looked pretty to Sue. Carrie's hands also looked completely smooth, like they had never been touched or touched anything. Sue wondered if she'd had a manicure or if she had done them herself. She felt an urge to be the first to hold them that closely, reached a hand over without much thought.

 

“Here, you should have this,” Carrie said shakily, pausing Sue’s hand. She gently pushed off the corsage, careful not to tear or bruise any petals. “I didn't think of it, it's meant for you. Not like there’s a chance he thought of me when he picked it. Hope not anyway.”

 

She took Sue’s hand and stretched the elastic around it below the bone of her fine wrist, settled the flowers over the top, smiled at the corner of her mouth.

 

Sue dry swallowed and it hurt. It was beautiful. The gesture, not the corsage. How she did it was so gentle and sure. She wiped a tear away with her empty hand, leaving the flowers untouched over the hand gripping the gear stick.

 

“Thank you. It’s … it's fucking hideous,” Sue said through a grimace. Carrie laughed. “He’s worthless, can’t even pick a decent corsage.”

 

“That's why you keep his sweatshirt in the back?” Carrie pointed her thumb behind Sue’s seat. “So you can pull over and zip it on, weep? Jerk off in tears?”

 

“Get out,” Sue said, reaching over Carrie closer than she needed to and opening her door. Carrie threw her head back and laughed, lifted Sue’s arm off her. She gathered her dress around her knees and the material crackled.

 

“Hey,” Sue said, her voice refusing to sound like she’d hit puberty. “I had, like, the best time tonight. And I wouldn’t have if all this hadn’t happened.”

 

Carrie’s smile drifted away and her forehead tensed. She turned her head towards her lap and held her dress to herself more tightly.

 

“I think I could have done without bleeding in the locker room,” Carrie deadpanned. “If you wanted me to be your date, you could have just asked like all the others did.” Sue laughed hard enough to make the car shake and that made Carrie look bright again.

 

They hadn’t spoken a word yet about all the years that had webbed between the two of them, the times when Sue had stood behind the other girls who snapped their teeth dripping with diet pop and nicotine.

 

Carrie didn’t know Sue had bled in that locker room, too. She knew she could make Sue laugh and want to touch her. Like the friendships she had watched bloom around her all her life. She didn’t want to bring up anything to break that spell.

 

Sue felt good about Carrie appearing to like her. It made her wish Carrie would judge others more carefully. Something her mother should have taught her. But Carrie _worried_ for her mother who was still, by all accounts, a wicked bitch even if she had a sad story. And she had not said anything unkind about any of the other girls in the locker room. In Carrie’s nightmares, she still mourned the pig that was slaughtered to destroy her.

 

Sue hated that pig.

 

Carrie didn't know how viscous and heavy its blood had been when Sue shook it from the bucket like cranberry sauce from a can and washed it away with the hose outside the gym, kicking slithery clots of it down the hill into the woods in the dark. She'd rinsed her running sneakers off and chucked them wet in her back seat with bits of grass stuck to them. It would have been bad enough to track wet grass onto the carpet at home, let alone whatever ooze might be stuck in the rubber soles. 

 

“I do need to go inside now,” Carrie said, bending forward to look at her house through Sue’s windshield.

 

“Well at least all the lights are out. For me that usually means I’m spared until morning!” Sue offered cheerfully as Carrie carefully stepped outside the car.

 

“I’ll be fine,” Carrie assured her as she straightened her dress one last time. She stood on the curb and left the car door open. Moments passed and she still stood with her toes turned in, gripping her hip with the hand that was missing the corsage. She towered extra tall in those heels and the oddity of it made Sue’s heart race.

 

Sue had researched cars thoroughly before choosing her used Volvo, knowing the durability matched the aesthetic value. Still, it wasn’t in great condition and it needed some care she hadn’t given it after the rough winter. Her father told her so every few weeks or any time they passed each other in the driveway, whichever came first.

 

So when she heard the metallic creak of the passenger side door it was only surprising because no one, not even the wind, had moved it. When it then shut firmly and Carrie stood still on the curb, Sue’s body went cold. Her hands and head pulsed, even her gums pulsed. Then Carrie bent down, her hair hung around her face and her lips pressed in a clever smile between her angelic cheeks. She waved to Sue and stood up again, turned neatly to walk to her house.

 

Sue watched the curb where she had stood, and then the car door, with her mouth hung open. By the time she regained her senses and thrust her head forward to see Carrie walk through her front door she was gone. Sue looked instead for a light coming on in the house. When she saw a soft glow pass through from the back she dropped her arms and chin to the steering wheel.

 

She would have slept there happily, not having to wonder any longer about why she liked Carrie so much. 

 

\--

 

Eleanor Snell, Sue’s mother, nodded her head up from the armchair nearest the front window when Sue’s headlights turned into their driveway and shone through her drooping eyelids. She stood up tall, straightened her pajamas and smoothed her hair ready for battle. She stood listening to her daughter shut her car door, waited for the familiar clomp and scrape of her heavy feet when she approached the front door.

 

“Sue!” Eleanor started the moment the seal on the door cracked open. “The side of the road, that’s where you ought to be right now, the side of the road murdered or crushed to death by a drunk.”

 

“Why?” Sue passed her and dropped her keys on the entryway table, started to kick off her early birthday present, the stripey weird name tennis shoes.

 

“I let you off the hook so many times because of that dumb shit.” She watched her sieve-like teenage brain recognize what she was talking about, then roll her eyes. “Now I’m up half the night waiting for my daughter to get scraped off the road, dumped in a basket at my door with a ‘Sorry m’am’ note?”

 

“Is that how you think it would happen?” Sue asked.

 

“Go to your room! Half the night, Sue, half the night.” It was useless. She couldn't scare anything into her. Never could. Her child never believed in monsters, pajamas, hairbrushes, or knee pads.

 

“It’s only 11:30.” Sue crossed her arms and stood square, just like she would on the playground when she didn't want to leave yet. Back when Eleanor could still dress her properly. “And I’m telling dad you said ‘shit’.”

 

Her mouth dropped open. “I said ‘dumb shit’.”

 

“Whoa, Ellie! Did you have a drink with dinner?”

 

Eleanor tried hard and failed to suppress a quick laugh. She liked to think Sue got some of her wit from her.

 

“I quit drinkin’ just before you were born. Go to bed.” She caught the appreciative glimmer in Sue’s eyes before she clambored around her room getting ready for bed. Loudest girl imaginable for how small she turned out.

 

Eleanor would miss her terribly, despite the despair she'd put her through the past year. She worried Sue had gone for Tommy simply because he was pretty and popular and put his stupid meaty arm around her one day. Eleanor knew that kid was a barrel of shit she could smell from the kitchen when he used to come pick Sue up at night, and she fought herself not to block the door.

 

Sue’s father on the other hand had liked that he played football, still asked Sue how Tommy was doing. Two shitheads.

 

Eleanor shook her head as she stood leaning at the edge of the hallway looking at the light under Sue’s door, thinking about how dumb both men were.

 

And how Sue had managed to unhook herself from one of them.

 

Something new had emerged with the spring. Eleanor could put herself to bed now on that thought.

 

\--

 

**Fresh start**

 

A couple hours into the drive in the moving truck they made their first gas stop. Katya climbed back into the cab, leaned over and kissed Trixie.

 

“In a new state, right?”

 

“Will you give me a reason for every kiss? I might like that.” Katya had intended a short kiss but Trixie made it a slow one, pulling her closer with her hands around her face and ears. That was until a truck driver walked past close enough to brush his shoulder against the door and whistled loudly enough to make the open window vibrate. Trixie scoffed at the disruption.

 

“At least he didn't say anything bad, you perv,” Katya teased.

 

“Why does it seem like everything wants to stop us, huh?” Trixie snapped back. She sat straight up in the cab, smoothing her hair. Katya helped pull some of it forward over her shoulder the way she liked to wear it. She thought of long ago when she'd learned about Margaret clipping her daughter's hair shorter and shorter because it grew so fast and curly.

 

“Is that how you feel?” Katya asked, twisting a lock around her finger while her lips twitched. They didn't have time to stop and get into it now. She was pretty certain she would need to cry in order to _talk_. Trixie wouldn't. Whenever Trixie brought home new Kleenex, it brought a tear to Katya's eye knowing Trixie didn't need them.

 

“I think,” she continued, stuffing back the tremor that threatened to burst, “he thought I was one of his ilk gettin’ lucky with a really pretty girl.” She coughed into her free hand, made into a fist. “Maybe it gave his sorry ass hope.”

 

Trixie laid her head back and squished the rounds bulbs over Katya's sharp cheeks. “Is that so?”

 

“Yeah.” Katya said between Trixie's fingers, and gave the curl a tug. She took her hand back and turned the key in the ignition. “And he doesn't even know how super cummy you get--”

 

“Oh for crying out loud.” Trixie pushed Katya's face and took her hand back.

 

“What!”

 

“It's broad daylight,” she answered, gesturing and blinking into the noon sun directly overhead, through the windshield.

 

“Yeah yeah …” Katya muttered as she pulled the lever into drive while Trixie pulled out a pair of oversized double rimmed sunglasses, tinted rose gold. Katya strained to see around her. “Could you behead yourself for a second so I can fucking see?”

 

Trixie pushed herself back and laughed at Katya craning her entire upper body to check the clearance as she pulled out. She thought carefully and put her fingers on Katya's lower back, right above the waist of her jeans. Touching her in new places was heaven.

 

Katya winced and cursed when the truck bounced coming off the curb.

 

“You’re okay. Not much back there, remember?” Trixie drummed her fingers over her spine and Katya blew air out through her pursed lips.

 

“What era are those from?” Katya asked once they were back on the highway, gesturing with her eyes to the sunglasses. She relaxed when there was less traffic to contend with.

 

“I snatched them from a purse I found in Momma's bedroom closet when I went home for her birthday.” Trixie rubbed her lips together holding in a good secret.

 

“Why were you in her closet?” It seemed like a fair question. Trixie’s face flattened.

 

“She asked me for gloves so we could go out. She says her hands get cold but it's because she's self-conscious about the arthritis swelling up her knuckles.” It was an odd place to pause and Katya knew it wasn't where Trixie meant to end. Without looking she moved her hand over and Trixie grasped it. Katya spared a quick glance from the road and saw Trixie’s soft jaw and the arm of her mother's sunglasses hung over her ear, her face turned all the way towards the window. “I know I'm not going back for a long time. I can't listen to it like I used to. I thought getting older would make me tougher.”

 

“You’re super strong. You can do anything.”

 

“I don't want to be. I don't want to.” Trixie said it with a shrug.

 

Katya tapped her teeth and focused on the painted lines on the road. She could feel the flowers she'd had delivered to their new home mocking her with their velvety petals. For expecting she and Trixie could change their own just for falling in love and taking new names.

 

“There's this red Wonder Bread loaf shaped purse that's sat on a shelf high up in her closet as long as I can remember,” Trixie continued with renewed energy. “Found some loose change, a wallet, and these sunglasses,” she said, wiggling the frames above her nose. “The lining smelled like stale cigarettes, I guess she smoked those at some point.”

 

“A wallet?” 

 

“Yep,” Trixie confirmed with a suggestive nod.

 

“Oh yeah?” Katya exaggerated her intrigue to keep Trixie’s spirit up. 

 

“She had a different name.” Katya looked between her and the road and back again with a shocked face, her mouth wide open. “I know, right?”

 

“That's … your mom is … interesting.” She drew out the nasal sound at the end.

 

\--

 

“Turn right at World’s Largest Prairie Dog,” Trixie mumbled with her fingers pressed on both temples, looking down between her knees. Katya didn’t laugh as hard as she would have three hours earlier.

 

“That was four years ago, _sweetie_.” They had been trying out generic pet names along the drive as well as debating whether they would need to use each other's new names.

 

“You--” Trixie laughed as more images from that memory resurfaced, “--boomeranged us 90 miles into another state to see a huge concrete phallus with a rodent face painted on it, then sulked the whole time that it wasn't real!” Trixie reached her arms high as they could go in the cab and mimicked Katya's pouty faces from that journey.

 

They reached a red traffic light and Katya turned her hips to stretch until she felt a pop.

 

“If you’re never going to let that go, at least admit you didn’t know it was a hoax either.”

 

“The signs said he was 15 feet tall!” Katya turned to look at her with a guileless smile before she started to laugh in earnest, too. “You really thought it could be real. You're adorable. And I love you.”

 

Trixie shook her head and Katya patted her knee through her circle skirt. Trixie had a dozen or more of these because they were so easy to make and the cut of it twirled. The length always covered her whether she was sitting, standing on a ladder, or working on the floor. This one was a vibrant cornflower blue with small white polka dots, paired with a plain white knit top. On someone who didn't believe in the look it would seem prissy, but Trixie made it casual and elegant. Once again she looked to Katya like someone she’d only started to understand. 

 

“Stop!” Trixie shouted. Katya slammed the brakes at a red light and the moving truck rebounded, sat in a crosswalk. Trixie loosened the seatbelt where it had automatically tightened over her shoulder.

 

When she drove off the frizz around Katya's temples flew into her eyes with the windows rolled down. The AC in the truck was subpar at best. When Trixie had reluctantly gone down for a nap after their first gas stop, Katya promised they would not move cross country in August again.

 

They were minutes from the new house, keys in hand, and Katya’s palms were slipping on the steering wheel from sweat and nerves. Her back burned and her ass felt like any fat and muscle had melted away and she was perched on her bones. Sweat trickled down her wrist. She dried her hands on the thighs of her jeans, one at a time to be safe.

 

\--

 

“Oh I love it, it’s so new and …” Trixie stood on the hot paved driveway in her bare feet, rocking on her heels. She had jumped out before putting her sandals back on she was so excited to be somewhere new to call home for a while. It was a duplex apartment, as close to house-like as Katya projected they could afford to rent. She'd wanted it to feel a little more grown up than where they’d lived while she was an undergrad. She'd had a lot in mind when picking it out. She still had the letter. Like hell she was going to burn that.

 

Katya’s hands were flat on the concrete to help stretch her legs and back. When she rolled herself up and walked to Trixie’s side she saw red, wet cheeks.

 

“Hey. Let’s go inside and look around,” Katya said softly, tugging on the pocket sewn into her skirt. It was lined with velvet that gave Katya a warm tingle through that side of her body and she slipped her hand inside. Trixie joined her hand in there and they walked together.

 

On the doorstep was a large glass vase filled with peonies in different shades of pink and purple, some of them still tight buds and others softly blooming. A few boxes of non-perishable groceries and basic household supplies also waited just next to the door, just as Katya had ordered, and she was thrilled it had worked out perfectly. So thrilled that she missed Trixie bringing it all in herself. Once Katya unlocked the door she raced in to scope out each room, checked that the switches and water were all working.

 

“Come look!” Katya called from one of the two bedrooms upstairs. This was the one she thought they could share. Back when she was cleanly lovesick and for a flash saw The Future in a straight line. When she fantasized about Trixie’s body late into the night, thinking how carefully she would do everything, how smooth and quiet it would feel. Instead she got flashes of how it actually went down that made her cringe with embarrassment. Chaos. Like someone else had pushed up against her and bullied her aside to get the job done. _Something about …  ‘pussy … bubblegum’ … fuck_. 

 

She took her hair down and fluffed it out, tied it back up into a tighter knot. Looking out the rectangle window with a view of an identical housing block and no one walking by, Katya--who felt liminal thinking of either of her suggested names--bounced on her toes to test the solidness of the floor beneath her.

 

“There's a big bathtub like our old place,” Trixie called from the bathroom. Katya smiled. She'd forgotten about this place having the big bathtub. The second house they lived in with a bunch of roommates had a great big bathtub that Trixie had mourned losing, even though their roommates were awful.

 

“Our bedroom?” Katya jumped at Trixie’s voice behind her. She turned with her thumbnail between her teeth. “Yuck, don't start up with that again,” Trixie said with care, extending her hand to Katya who gave hers to her to examine. “Hmm. No damage done. Your hands are so pretty.” Trixie held on.

 

“Yea-yes, I thought this would be the bigger room. This is the bigger room.” Her body was shaking and she couldn't stop it. “So that's good, sharing it?” she asked Trixie as if she were confirming with a stranger. Trixie stood her ground and breathed deeply with Katya writhing on her hand.

 

“Let's unpack the truck. Won't take long.” Trixie let her go and walked out, tapping her nails on the doorframe on the way.

 

\--

 

It did not take long but it was dark outside and they had met their next door neighbors by the time the truck was empty. The neighbors were a married couple in their late 20s and the husband offered to help move in the heaviest items. With his baseball hat turned backwards for moving-shit-purposes, he alluded to his and his wife's bedroom being on the other side of the apartment so they wouldn't have to worry about hearing them. They looked at each other expressionless. 

 

“You have our number, when you get a line in leave yours under our door! We'd love to have you over!” Katya nodded and smiled at them with as much energy as she could muster while shutting the door.

 

“That's a cult. What if they want one of us to carry their larvae?” Katya gagged as she crossed over to Trixie. Trixie laughed and leaned against the kitchen counter, still in her white tennis shoes which she only wore for heavy work. Katya tapped them with the toes of her sneakers and kept her hands wrapped around herself.

 

She offered Trixie a bath in their new big bathtub but she declined, citing that she seemed to be more stressed. She said it with a slight rasp and hiss that ripened Katya in seconds. Even her tongue felt instantly swollen. She'd been scoping out Trixie’s solid back and soft arms while they moved in, the tendons in her forearms as she lifted and pushed things around. Remembering her forearm beneath her, moving so fast. She wanted that again. Exactly that. Trixie had been so nice. 

 

Trixie’s hand on her arm pulled a sound from her throat that required her to open her mouth again and say something, no matter how stupid. 

 

“Big day.”

 

“Everything is really good. I'm so grateful.” Trixie lowered her chin and smiled, trying to convince her. “You're off duty now.” She stroked the fine barely visible hair on Katya's forearm with her finger and looked at her more closely. Trixie had pulled all of her hair over one shoulder. She looked like one of a hundred versions of her very best.

 

“Still no?” Trixie asked like she'd picked up a bit of a broken balloon and was twisting it between her fingers. She wasn't actually trying to seduce or make Katya feel bad.

 

Katya shook her head with her mouth tight, tucked into one corner. Trixie showered her with plenty of physical affection the whole trip, even in front of their new neighbors, and Katya craved it, but she could barely return it. 

 

“I’m freaked. I love you to pieces but I feel so much responsibility to take care of you.” Trixie’s eyes searched away from Katya’s and Katya scrambled to explain better without digging herself deeper. “Exactly like I wanted to. Now I feel responsible in a whole new way, and I knew it would be a big deal being uh ... first to land on the moon? But shit, not like this and—”

 

“This is all going to come out backwards now,” Trixie rushed out with her hands up, begging Katya to stop. “But I’ve been thinking about it and you ought to know now.”

 

Trixie twisted their hands together and held them in her lap, examined the knot of fingers. Katya's were slimmer and a little longer. Trixie’s looked softer but more graceful.

 

“My ... moon ... has been landed on, before you. And what happened last night didn’t happen happen then.” She glanced up at Katya, looked over her face and body for signs. Katya's chest rose and fell faster. “It's not just _me_ making my stuff happen. It's _us_. Together.”

 

The house had a thermostat which was a new experience for them and they had quickly set it to a cool 72 degrees. It made a steady buzz that was only noticeable when it shut off periodically once the set temperature was reached. With only the couch, one surviving shelving unit and the TV stand but no TV to fill the room, every shift of their bodies made a sound. 

 

“Who?” Katya asked through her fingers. She'd brought them up to her mouth without realizing, and when she did she laughed sharply and dropped her hand. “Who did your stuff not happen with?”

 

“A woman I was seeing for a while, last fall.”

 

“Jinkx?”

 

Trixie threw her hands up and Katya knew immediately she was wrong on many fronts. Trixie and Jinkx had spent an awful lot of time together, sometimes had late night phone calls after Katya had gone to bed. She had wondered, she couldn’t help herself and this seemed like the moment to intrude.

 

“Sorry--”

 

“No!” Trixie quietly shrieked, glaring. “Not Jinkx. She's been a good friend.” She held her hand up to Katya before she could interrupt. “She got me to finally accept a date when I was devastated over _you_ starting up with yet another guy.” Trixie kicked off her shoes and walked to the stairs leading to the bathroom.

 

“Devastated?” Katya asked while walking after her.

 

“You can keep talking, just …” Trixie shooed her back with her hand and shut the door.

 

Katya leaned on the doorframe and resumed chewing her thumbnail, spitefully. “When was this?”

 

“Exactly.” The tap was running. Trixie ran it when she was anxious and couldn't pee. A holdover from a series of incidents in middle school.

 

Katya decided to wait for Trixie to come out but when she heard her dig through her toiletries to start her night routine, she turned and walked to the cursed, busted couch that looked decrepit in this sterile apartment. She wondered if one of them would sleep on it tonight after all. They had declined help setting up Trixie’s bed which they had brought with them for the second bedroom. Guilt washed over her for being rude about their neighbor, whatever his name was, who had been an extremely kind dweeb with a clip-on cellphone. 

 

She felt very young all of a sudden. Too young. Foolish with her big plans. She curled up on the couch without a pillow.

 

\--

 

Some time later, Trixie shook her shoulder and bent Katya's legs up so she could sit herself down on the opposite side facing her. She was in sensible two piece pajamas and the lights were still on. Her hair was damp in a braid. When Trixie saw Katya asleep she'd gone ahead and taken a bath after all. It made Katya happy that she took care of herself. She was, sometimes to Katya's disadvantage, very good at taking care of herself.

 

Katya moved closer to her and Trixie pulled her shoulders in under her arm.

 

“You didn't tell me about this big thing.” Katya’s voice was dry from the air conditioning, her face half pressed into Trixie’s armpit. “You didn't want to tell me.”

 

“‘Cause you're a horrible person,” Trixie replied flatly.

 

“I know.”

 

“Worst friend, useless, heartless. Vapid. Stupid.” Katya felt Trixie’s silent laughter blow through her hair. “Bad in bed.”

 

“You threw that one in just to hide it with sarcasm, do you mean it?” Katya pulled back and looked. 

 

“No I don't mean it. You were effective.” Katya looked at her askew. “Intense?”

 

“Well I took a shot, right? I'm not an expert. You and your fuckin’ dyke arms.” Katya lightly punched the one around her.

 

“Okay you fired many shots directly into my … ,” Trixie replied, pulling her arm away and roughly jabbing her fingers through the air. Katya's jaw dropped and she pulled the neck of her tank top up over her her nose. She scrambled onto her knees, letting the top fall down loose, almost exposing her nipples without noticing. 

 

“That is so rude! For the record I think I was possessed.” Katya giggled with her teeth clenched and her fist tightly balled on her knee. 

 

“Sex is weird.” Trixie looked down blinking quickly and rubbing at one eye. Katya loosened her fist and flexed her fingers. She rubbed her palm on her jeans, trying to scratch the stubborn itch of her ego. Then she dabbed under her eye to check that the cut from the night before wasn’t oozing. 

 

“It’s me causing this? You could be with someone else and be fine?” Their shared silence spanned the entirety of what they knew and loved about each other. 

 

“Was it good, being with her?” Trixie covered her face and groaned into her hands, resistant to the questioning. “I just meant you liked her, right?”

 

“Yeah I did.” She came up for air and her face and neck were pink. “She liked me, too. A lot.”

 

“When did you last see her?” Katya didn't move a muscle. She regretted asking in a way that implied she had a casual interest, though she was certain Trixie knew she was dying inside. And doing her best to keep it together. 

 

“Last week.” Katya's eyes bulged and Trixie snorted a laugh. “I wasn't planning to, we broke up months ago. But you came back from a run this one morning, on the front lawn. The front patch of pubic grass named ‘lawn’. All sweaty and muscle-y.” Trixie rubbed her fingers and looked into her lap. She quickly met Katya's eyes and flicked her eyes down again with a small wicked grin. “I thought about sneaking into your bed, lying naked under the sheets. Hoped you'd jump on me from the shower with your little wet body.”

 

Katya winced. “I would have, fuck!” She laughed and slapped her knees.

 

“In a sexy way, not the usual way.”

 

“I know, I know, trust me, last week? Last week I would have landed pussy first.” She combed her hands through her hair and leaned against the back of the couch, propping the side of her face up with her arm.

 

“She was still a safer bet.” Trixie laid her face in line with Katya's and reached for her legs to pull them straight. “Don't you want to get out of these jeans?” she asked, smacking Katya's calf.

 

Katya took deep breaths and tried not to think about Trixie caring about someone else this way. Let alone touching her which was unimaginable. And finding it unimaginable made her feel worse yet again. A Matryoshka doll of cringe. 

 

“Stop thinking about it.” Increasingly in their friendship, Trixie could pinpoint what Katya was thinking beyond shared observations. Occasionally it veered into eery, annoying depending on the context.

 

“Why did you break up?”

 

Trixie shrugged like it was obvious. “You got into schools and chose where you wanted to go. And I knew I was gonna go with you.” She nudged Katya’s leg to tell her it was okay to ask.

 

“Why?”

 

Trixie tilted her head and looked back to the flowers. The water in the vase rippled and the bouquet trembled.

 

Katya watched with a flutter of skepticism as a deep pink peony with its petals fluffed out unwedged itself from the vase with a squeak and spun on a slow path towards her, dripping along the way.

 

“It's for you,” Trixie softly assured her with her open hands.

 

Mirroring her gesture, Katya caught the flower around its petals when it reached her, her lips parted to say something. She glanced up quickly but couldn't see a thing. She shut her eyes and tears landed around the pistil in the middle.

 

“You're mine. I gave you my corsage,” Trixie said and her voice cracked. “I put it on your wrist.”

 

Katya sniffed loudly and pink and red splotches broke out around her wet blue eyes. She had thought about the corsage a thousand times. She cried when she learned her mother threw it away by mistake when she cleaned out her childhood room back home a couple years earlier. Eleanor herself had scared off raccoons to dig through bags of trash looking for it so when she would have to admit it was gone, at least she could tell her child she'd tried.

 

“Did it mean something back then?” she finally asked Trixie.

 

“I don't know what it meant,” Trixie admitted, and it disappointed them both a little. “But it didn't mean nothing.” Katya looked straight ahead and nodded in acceptance. It was not the most romantic explanation but it was sincere.

 

Sometimes Trixie’s powers felt like that to her, as discreetly as she exercised them. Like love, shown rarely, privately. But Katya had relied on signs too long for information while there were real things being said, other things unsaid. 

 

“Tell me again?” Katya asked. She'd buried herself into Trixie’s pajama shirt and the spot around her nose was soaked.

 

“I said a lot of things,” Trixie laughed over her head. Katya fed her the words. “Yeah. You're mine.” 

 

\--

 

**By My Side**

 

They had plenty of shit to figure out.

 

They needed to purchase a car, for one thing. Katya had begrudgingly sold her Volvo for almost nothing right before they moved. She had savings including graduation checks her grandparents gave her. 

 

Trixie had enough savings to get by while she looked for a job and neither of them worried about her finding one. She was more concerned about growing a side business that had been hard to keep on the side when she’d had enough requests, patterns, and materials to drown in. It had become unmanageable by the spring when she stopped taking custom orders because she couldn't fulfill them before the move.

 

Katya told her she would do amazing with just a couple of business classes. They planned to look at community college and continuing education options for something she could start right away or mid-semester. 

 

They were also considering purchasing mobile phones. It seemed more and more that everyone had to have one. 

 

The main shit, though, was how much Trixie wanted to try again and how Katya did, too, with so many buts. 

 

They shared the one bed as they often had in the past as friends. Katya laid inside Trixie’s curves but resisted being called ‘little spoon’. She liked to have some weight on her while she slept, found it soothing, that was all. 

 

By the third night, after they had put their remaining smaller belongings away, set up Trixie’s sewing room and managed to cook pasta in the kitchen, they both got a little restless under the covers.

 

Trixie pushed Katya's hair back behind her ears. She thought she knew everything about her face but when she started touching it she realized she hadn't seen every expression; every angle of the hollows of her eyes; the movement between the bones and fat in her cheeks; all the smile lines she already had. She got so many from making other people laugh and smile with her.

 

"Will you tell me your mom's real name?" She knew Trixie wanted to. She nodded. 

 

"Beatrice. Mattel." 

 

"Jesus Christ." Katya covered her face and shrieked into her hand. "You are so creepy. I love you so much."

 

"Why is that creepy?" It was 1am and her voice was shrill. "It's not a dead person's name, it's her real name. Or her former name, I assume she legally changed it to Margaret White. Also I like Trixie better so I'm not taking it exactly." Katya shushed her, stroking mockingly down her face while she reeled back. 

 

"You didn't have to tell me it was something you invented. I like that it comes from your past." She pressed into Trixie's breasts and stomach and heard a happy hum above her. 

 

\--

 

A full week in, they were still going to bed and waking up fully clothed. Staying up late, even into the early morning hours, laying close.

 

“I don't know if you noticed,” Trixie said very quietly, her thumb tracing around Katya's lips, “nothing bad happens when I touch you. And the way you respond is nice for me.” Katya opened her mouth a little and scraped her lips to relieve the sensation Trixie had left there. Her body was so sensitive she couldn't bear it. “If you want, I’m happy to try--”

 

“It's not fair. I want to touch you, too. I can be gentle.” Trixie’s face fell. It made Katya think she didn't believe her. “Maybe I did something wrong the first time and I broke something in your brain.”

 

“You probably knocked something loose.” Whereas Katya had softened more quickly having spent the years since high school with college classmates from around the country, Trixie mostly maintained her homegrown stoicism, verging on pure stone at times. “Or ripped out a wire. With your fingers in my--”

 

“I have feelings.” This redundant non-argument wore on both of them. 

 

Trixie kept smiling but dropped her head. “I know. I know. I'm sorry. But you are, like, so hard on yourself.” She scratched the back of Katya's neck until she took a deep breath and let her eyelids droop a millimeter before insistently snapping them open. “See, I can't even compete.” 

 

“I feel weaker than I ever have.” Katya said with a grumble. “It bothers the shit out of me.” 

 

“It's ‘cause you're really sexy when you’re taking action and never stopping. That’s where you get your ego boner.” Katya nodded quickly. “But you can be weak and unsure. You can still be sexy then, too.”

 

“Can I still be sexy if I'm like, weak, unsure, also with a sweaty, bony boy body?” Katya turned her face into her pillow over the irony of her girlish insecurity.

 

“Really?” Trixie asked, her voice high pitched and incredulous. She never believed it. 

 

Katya lifted her head. “Yes, you still have to tell me I'm pretty. Especially if I ever get up the guts to fuck you again.” She dropped back down, chuckling into her underfilled pillow. “Traumatized on so many levels.” 

 

“Well … when I look at you, and when I touch you, you're beautiful and perfect.” It was the sweetest thing and Katya believed her. She didn’t say everything she felt but she didn’t say things just because. “And you made me feel loved.” 

 

Katya smiled in earnest, finally. “Even when I was being gross?” 

 

“Actually, yeah. All of it. Please stop saying ‘gross’. We have enough enemies.” 

 

Katya nodded a vow. She rocked on her hip for a few seconds before turning onto her back, pushing the covers down to her waist. Laying like this reminded her of a similar anticipation when she was fifteen, at a party in the bed of someone's parents who were out of town.

 

She moved her eyes to Trixie’s dark shining ones. It was clear that Trixie was not entirely certain and that was a relief. It tightened the pull deep in her hips and she tilted them up a little in response. She let Trixie’s hand brush over her stomach and rest there, then tensed her abdomen to encourage her to keep going elsewhere. Trixie moved her hand up between her breasts, up her neck. Her skin pricked up in gooseflesh and her body rolled chasing Trixie’s hand.

 

“See? It’s nice just to give. You're so good--,” Trixie stopped when Katya sucked in a sharp breath when she reached her ear, overwhelmed, “--at receiving.” She took her hand back and laid her head down patiently.

 

Katya blew out the breath with a moan.

 

Trixie smiled and shook her head, leaned over again and kissed her, banging their teeth a couple times because she smashed into Katya's mouth so quickly. It was their first kiss since crossing into a new state. 

 

“I think--don’t you think we have time? Lots of time, together?” Trixie asked when she laid back, licking her dried out lips. Katya considered it, looking at the soft mauve lips she'd first noticed years ago, before they were drawn together to defy brutality. She also thought of this mystery ex-girlfriend--yet again--and whether she had been similarly obligated to purchase Trixie’s favorite flavor of Kissing Koolers lip gloss whenever she saw it in stock at a drugstore. The kind she probably wished she had nearby right now. Even if she did mention it to her, had she checked any time she was in a shop that carried Maybelline? Not a fucking chance.

 

For years Katya had loved Trixie. She realized it had changed into something more two springs ago, the end of her junior year, when Trixie had to spend a night in the hospital with a migraine. It was a Saturday evening, the worst possible time to be admitted to the emergency room. Katya used the payphone to call around and cancel her own 21st birthday party, then stood beside Trixie’s bed most of the night while they kept her on an IV of sodium valproate. Trixie couldn't talk and for a while she was too sick to sleep. Once she could talk, Katya obliged. Once she could sleep, Katya watched. A number of other patients had come and gone around them in that time. Around 2am a nurse brought her a chair and squeezed it in at the foot of the bed, gave her a wink and a pat on the shoulder, and drew the curtain around their individual patient bay.

 

Her college friends had long teased both of them about their relationship. They both knew their friendship stretched boundaries and made people uncomfortable. Neither of them cared about the talk.

 

But sitting in that space alone last year with Trixie with only the essential hospital lights and staff around them, being identified as someone special in the middle of the night, in private just between her and that nurse? She realized that mistake or not it happened to feel good and true. 

 

“Yes,” Katya answered. She pulled Trixie’s hand back to her ear. “We have time.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***New note: this fic is very much not abandoned :) :) :) it is on hiatus. I'm reworking it to my liking because I adore it. I want to finish by Fall 2019.*** 
> 
> Songs! 
> 
> "Astral Weeks" by Van Morrison. I wanted to introduce their mothers for a variety of insights, and this song sheds light and sympathy on Margaret but also on Carrie!Trixie’s need to refuse anger. 
> 
> "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy" by Sarah McLachlan. This song came to mind after I’d forgotten about it for years, helped me gel their journey together. The lyric at the top of the chapter is from it. 
> 
> "By My Side" by INXS (the subtitle for the last section) is just, whatever, I think of it and listen to it often in life, it works great.

**Author's Note:**

> References!
> 
> \- The fic title is a play on the headstone graffiti from the original film version which reads: Carrie White Burns in HELL!
> 
> \- I envision high school and college “Sue” looking as Katya did in their Fashion Photo RuView with the rancid Hermione Granger wig. 
> 
> \- And Katya's current hair? Oh it is for sure her *grown out* Atomic Blonde wig, the one from DragCon with the short bangs. 
> 
>  
> 
> Let me know what you think in comments :) Or mattepinkallshades on Tumblr.


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